Nikita Harvey

Let them dance!

Friday, September 19, 9 am UK, Webinar: Fragment Screening using 19F NMR at the UCL School of Pharmacy, Nikita Harvey @nickynak3.bsky.social and Christopher Waudby @chriswaudby.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/webinar-fr... #NMRchat #NMR 🧲

Yep! I usually end up saying this most to Operations/Estates/contractors.

Simple transfer of 190ul into a 3mm tube took my robot almost exactly one minute for one sample, including the clean step.

If it would help, I can find out the time per sample for a specific method e.g. straight transfer of 600ul per sample to a tube?

If you're regularly prepping 96 well plates with the same or similar methods then I think a prep robot is well worth it. It may not be quicker overall than hand prep (though it can be pretty efficient with non-viscous liquids) but you'll get more reliable ergonomic prep with less hands-on time.

I've also found that they have a very limited selection of plate configurations. A student came to me with the well plates she was using for UV, but the needle didn't go down deep enough into the well and the safeguards won't let me create a minus Z-axis offset.

In theory we can use an Excel sheet to submit jobs to the queue, which is incredibly helpful when we have varieties of volumes to transfer or a complicated sequence of transfers. Unfortunately their macro has broken on my computer and they haven't figured out how to fix it. I think they've given up.

We've got one! We've been using it to prep fragment cocktails for our screening service. It's good in that it works well, but there are caveats. Switching between solvents is a huge faff, for example.

Three simple ways to follow chemical reactions with your NMR spectrometer u-of-o-nmr-facility.blogspot.com/2008/10/kine... #nmr #nmrchat #chemsky

A closeup image of a small cylindrical glass tube used for NMR spectrocopy filled with a blue dye solution that shines a faint pinkish light.

I love the shine of Silicon Rhodamine in the morning sun ✨

Two Bruker engineers installing the cooling rack on the SamplePro Tube liquid handler

Bruker SamplePro Tube liquid handler with the new cooling rack installed. The cover is open and the robot is lit by a blue LED strip.

Today we're having a cooling/heating rack installed into our NMR liquid handling robot! This should help keep protein and DNA samples stable during prep for our 19F fragment screening service #NMRchat

www.ucl.ac.uk/pharmacy/abo...

I have 'acquired' one that's no longer wanted and am keeping it as a souvenir / using it as office decor 😁

Nikita standing in front of a projector screen showing the agenda for the UK Magnetic Resonance Managers Meeting 2025

Prize winners from the RSC NMRDG postgraduate meeting. Back row: Jack Bertovici (poster prize winner), Darshil Kapadia (oral runner-up), Katherine Bonham (oral runner-up), James Williamson (poster runner-up), Dr Ralph Adams (NMRDG Secretary). Front row: Dr Chris Waudby (host), Ella-May Hards (oral presentation winner), Meshezabeel Narciso (poster runner-up), Anupama Acharya (poster runner-up).

Attendees of the Royal Society of Chemistry NMR Discussion Group postgraduate meeting 2025 standing at the UCL School of Pharmacy entrance

Very proud to have taken the lead in organising the UK NMR manager's meeting last month and to have helped with the @rsc-nmrdg.bsky.social postgraduate discussion group here at UCL! It was a fantastic pair of meetings: www.ucl.ac.uk/pharmacy/new...

Ours is so effective that I need a jumper to sit at the computer for the 600! Unless I duck down low enough that the blast from the air con unit goes over my head. It pays to be short in my lab.

Discussing the state of NMR in the UK at the 2025 @rsc-nmrdg.bsky.social Postgraduate Meeting

Opening the 2025 NMRDG Postgraduate Meeting at the UCL School of Pharmacy

When NMR agrees that you are an absolute clown 🤡 🧪

We're looking forward to it! Especially the opportunity to talk about CcpNmr Analysis and some of the ways the software can be used by people working with small molecules including Peptides or those doing Metabolomics or Fragment Screening.

This will be the first time the UKMRM takes place at a School of Pharmacy, and I'm proud to have been given the opportunity to lead the event this year. Many thanks to @brukercorporation.bsky.social and Quad Systems for their sponsorship of the event. Sign up here: www.rsc.org/events/detai...

View of the UCL School of Pharmacy's 600 MHz spectrometer through a bronze-rimmed porthole in a wooden door

Just a couple of days left to register for the UK Magnetic Resonance Managers meeting, to be held on 16th June 2025 here at UCL School of Pharmacy! The meeting will involve the usual combination of RTP support, career discussions, instrumentation, NMR techniques, and tips and tricks. #NMRchat

Cartoon Boromir holding a sword and a rainbow flag

A screenshot from The Lord of the Rings movie of Boromir holding a sword and flag, but the flag has been photoshopped to be a rainbow pride flag

For Pride!!! 🏳️‍🌈✨
#Tolkien #art

Walking map around West London

It might be quicker than you think to walk station to station—TfL’s new walking maps show just how long it actually takes to get around the West End and the City on foot.

tfl.gov.uk/modes/walkin...

Reform UK-run Lincolnshire County Council scraps flood committee - BBC News The work will be incorporated into another committee despite all other parties opposing the change.

Wake-up call…

Lincolnshire has suffered some of the worst flooding in its history in recent years

Lincolnshire’s newly elected Reform council has abolished the flooding committee

This is who they are

Please wake up to this.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"This is what we were voting for!"

From a friend in academia:

>>I was with a public health professor from [major university] last weekend and he said that NIH is now euthanizing whole cohorts of animals from animal studies because there is nobody around to feed them<<

Great work.

ACS puts the spotlight on chemical technical professionals The society names May 22 an official day of celebration and recognition for a critical but often overlooked workforce

Join us in celebrating the unsung heroes of the chemical industry! On Chemical Technical Professionals Day, ACS spotlights the talented and dedicated technicians and specialists that enable success across chemical research and industry.

Read more about this initiative from C&EN:

“A 2024 analysis of the energy output of using ChatGPT by the Washington Post and researchers at UC Riverside found that just one 100-word email drafted by ChatGPT-4 uses about a water bottle’s worth of H2O, and enough electricity to power 14 LED lightbulbs for an hour.”

We are looking for facility manager to support biomolecular solution NMR on the 1.2 GHz in the National Research Facility and collaborative research in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick. To apply (deadline May 20 2025) and advert visit: warwick-careers.tal.net/vx/candidate...

good morning to everyone, but specifically to this silly little baby 😌🦊

The biggest miss by so many in media about the King's College study is that there is no social desirability bias for asexuals.

People are totally comfortable loudly proclaiming that they think aces are broken, attention seekers, and should be r*ped, and then they will say this to our faces.