Our group has a long history of materials research with over 250 papers published in this area since 1980. Some of our early materials research was on fast lithium ion conductors which are the precursors to what are now lithium ion batteries. Since 1984 we have been very active in glass research with over 80 papers published in this one area. Our more recent research has included topics such as bioactive glasses, sol-gel prepared materials, ionic-liquids and hydroxyapetites.

Possibly one of the most unusual pieces of research undertaken was published in 2011 entitled "Were the casing stones of Senefru's Bent Pyramid in Dahshour cast or carved? Multinuclear NMR evidence."

The research in to pharmaceuticals in the group has been in close collaboration with industrial partners. The research has included detecting Hydrous and Anhydrous forms of active pharmaceutical ingredients in tablet form due to the often very different bioactivity of the two forms, and more basic research in to Indomethacine and Ibuprofen which are both non-steroidal anti-imflammatories.

Tecnhiques used in this research are often based around measuring ¹H and ¹³C correlations. Techniques such as ¹H DQ CRAMPS combined with DFT calculations and refocused-INEPT have been used to great effect.

Over the last 10 years the group has been involved in demonstraiting the suitability of ¹⁷O NMR for structural determination of biomololecules and more recently using advanced pulse sequences to quantify hydrogen bonding. The work has involved methodology development on simple biological systems such as Glutamates which are neural transmitters and Amino Acids to more complicated systems such as Phospholemman which is involved in ion transfer through cell walls.

Research has just commenced with a new member of the team on structural determination and dynamics of larger biomolecules.