MChem student recognised at “junior Nobel Prize” awards

Recent MChem graduate Liam Bailey has been recognised as being among the world’s best, after being named in the top 10% of the thousands of entries for the 2017 Undergraduate Awards. He is among seven Cardiff University students in the top 10%.

The Undergraduate Awards - which is often referred to as a “junior Nobel Prize” - is the world’s largest international academic awards programme, recognising excellent research and original work across the sciences, humanities, business and creative arts.

The top 10% of submissions in each category are classed as Highly Commended. Liam was recognised for his MChem research in the Chemical and Pharmaceutical category, specifically on the catalytic decomposition of ammonia for hydrogen production. Liam is now a first year PhD candidate with the Catalysis CDT programme at Cardiff University.

He said: “I am very excited to have been recognised by the Undergraduate Awards and am very proud to have represented Cardiff University at this awards programme. I would like to thank the School of Chemistry and the Cardiff Catalysis Institute for helping me achieve this. I would like to especially thank my supervisor, Professor Stan Golunski, and PhD candidate Luke Parker for all the help and support gave me over the year I completed my research. I now look forward to conducting more research as part of my PhD studies.”

This year, the Undergraduate Awards received a record number of submissions in the 2017 programme: 6,432 papers from undergraduates from 299 institutions in 47 countries. Cardiff University had the fifth highest number of submissions in Europe, and was fourteenth internationally.

The Global Winner in each category will be announced on 19 September. Liam and fellow six commended students from Cardiff University have been invited to attend the annual Undergraduate Awards Global Summit in Dublin in November.