Sir David and Lady Clary Chemistry Fund
We are seeking to endow a fund in the names of Sir David and Lady Clary to enable Magdalen to offer graduate research scholarships in Chemistry in perpetuity.
Graduate-level Chemistry at Magdalen is highly competitive and the College attracts extremely strong applications from around the world. However, the absence of flexible funding prevents the College from taking on some of the best students undertaking exciting research projects which do not fall neatly under the limited funding opportunities provided by thematic doctoral training centres, with the result that Magdalen loses many of them to other colleges or universities.
The Sir David and Lady Clary Chemistry Fund will allow us to fund the very best Chemistry students to work on blue-sky curiosity-driven research projects that fall outside the usual narrowly-defined fields and might change how we think about science.
I worked closely with The President for many years on fundraising for the provision of undergraduate and graduate bursaries, the endowment of Fellowships and more recently for the renovation and extension of the Library. I am therefore delighted to support this new fund which will help our graduate chemistry students and which will carry the names of David and Heather Clary in recognition of the success of his Presidency and their splendid service to the College over the last 15 years.
Mark Loveday (1962), former Chair of the College Development Trust
Costs
It takes £1.2m to endow fully a graduate scholarship, which generates the up to £42,000 required for the fees, accommodation and living costs of one Chemistry graduate student each year. Recognising that graduate scholarships are vital to remain competitive amongst other world-leading institutions, this year the University launched a new matched funding scheme for endowing graduate scholarships which, subject to approvals and eligibility, we hope will help us achieve our goal.
With your help we can attract to Magdalen the very brightest Chemistry students doing the most innovative research.
| Donate to the Chemistry Fund |
| Donate from the USA |
46% of Magdalen chemists in the last decade have been women, well above the University average, and well over half (c. 60% in recent years) arrive from state schools either in the UK or from around the world.
Cost breakdown
Current annual University DPhil fee for a home student: £7970
Current annual University DPhil fee for an international student*: £26,405
*includes EU students from 2021
+
Annual stipend (based on a standard UKRI research council studentship): £15,285
=
Total annual cost for home student: £23,355
Total annual cost for international student: £41,690
Current drawdown on endowment: 3.5%
Amount required to endow a scholarship that can be taken up by a home student: £670,000
Amount required to endow a scholarship that can be taken up by an international student: £1.2m
Total endowment required per scholarship: £1.2m
Fundraising goal per scholarship: £1.2m
For more information about the Sir David and Lady Clary Chemistry Fund and Chemistry at Magdalen, see the Fund brochure here.
Donate to the Chemistry Fund or contact the Development Director, Heather Ebner, for further information.
“The support that everyone at Magdalen has given me during my DPhil has been amazing
and I am incredibly grateful to have been able to study here.” Max Haughey (2012)
It is no accident that Magdalen chemists also excel in other spheres: as sporting blues, University sports team captains, Captains of Boats or as University Challenge finalists.
Research
Amongst the current Magdalen graduate chemists are exceptionally talented researchers investigating topics as diverse as the structure and reactivity of transition metal nanoclusters, new synthetic routes to efficient production of naturally occurring molecules with anti-tumour and anti-hepatitis activity, and the photochemical basis of the magnetic compass sense in migratory birds.
Click the names below to learn more about some of our current Chemistry DPhil students and their research.
“My research is part of a large, international collaborative effort to understand the physical basis for the magnetic sense in night-migratory birds like the European robin.”
“Generously funded by the Magdalen Leon and Iris Beghian Scholarship, my research centres on the spectroscopy of small gas-phase transition metal clusters, which provide tractable model systems for heterogeneous catalysts.”
“The flexible nature of the funding that I have received during my DPhil has been incredibly important to me as a graduate student. It has allowed me to explore areas of research (total synthesis of natural products) for which there is less funding available, and to be engaged with several collaborations both within the University and internationally. I have been involved with research which we hope will lead to a better understanding of Alzheimer’s disease.”
| Donate to the Chemistry Fund |
| Donate from the USA |
The graduate funding horizon has changed significantly in the last five years. Opportunities for funding overseas students are difficult and the absence of flexible funding prevents the College from taking on students undertaking exciting research projects which do not fall neatly under the doctoral research centres.
Professor Sir David Clary talks to Serious Science about the quantum theory of chemical reactions.
