Chemistry's Cash Converters

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Prospering CPES students, Iain Simpson and Tamsyn Montagnon, are quids in having won £25,000 each in a Glaxo Wellcome competition. They were given the highly prestigious awards for their work in organic chemistry and will be using the money to pay for their post-doctoral research in the States. Iain, who is sponsored by Tocris-Cookson and works with Dr Clive Penkett, will be going to Ohio State University and Tamsyn, sponsored by AstraZeneca, to the Scripps Institute when they complete their DPhils next year.

The competition was set up by Glaxo Wellcome to identify bright young people with innovative ideas. They each had to put forward a research proposal based on an independent idea that had never been tried before. Both Tamsyn's and Iain's proposals were considered very original and could have practical applications in terms of the synthesis of pharmaceutical products in the future.

Professor Philip Parsons, Tamsyn's research supervisor and Dean of CPES, said, "It is the first time any student from Sussex has won such a prize. The fact that two students from Sussex won, out of only three awards (the other recipient coming from Cambridge), is fantastic. I am simply delighted - for them and the University."

The pair were in Basel, Switzerland at a Roche conference when they found out they had won. Iain recalled, "We received the call at 11.00pm and cracked open the champagne straight away. Unfortunately we had to get up at 6.00am the next day to give a presentation - we really could have done with a pair of matchsticks to keep our eyes open."

The awards follow on from their success last month when both Tamsyn and Iain won an AstraZeneca award for their organic chemistry work and received £4,000 each.

Tamsyn Montagnon and Iain Simpson are chemists with a commercial eye.