CPLAS PhD student wins award at Chem4Energy 2026

Congratulations to PhD student Thomas Hill, who was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Best Student Talk (Computational) prize at Chem4Energy 2026, held from 23–26 March 2026 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Thomas’ award‑winning presentation, Investigating Structure Reactivity Relationships in Plasmonically Active Metal Clusters on MOx Surfaces, highlighted the role of computation in understanding and designing materials for sustainable energy applications.

Thomas is a PhD student at Cardiff Universty in Professor Sir Richard Catlow’s group, and is part of the Catlysis Hub team working on CPLAS.

Chem4Energy 2026 marked the fifth annual meeting of the Chem4Energy conference series, which grew out of collaborative UK–Africa consortium programmes. The conference focuses on strengthening links between experimental and computational research, providing early-career researchers with opportunities to present their work, and fostering in-depth discussion.

The meeting brought together academic and industrial researchers from South Africa, Europe, the USA and beyond to discuss advances in sustainable energy materials and processes. Core themes included catalysis for clean energy, CO₂ capture and utilisation, hydrogen technologies, solar and nuclear energy, and the use of high‑performance computing in energy research.