News
This is a running commentary of the latest news from the Bull Research Group.
Violacein study published in PCCP
5 December 2025Our manuscript combining ultrafast transient absorption and potential energy surface calculations with explicit solvation on the photomolecular rotor dynamics of the bacterial pigment violacein has been accepted in Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics. The photomoleuclar motor dynamics involve twisting of two coordinates, phi and varphi, leading to a change in excited-state character from local excitation to charge transfer.
HGSC manuscript accepted - Journal of Physical Chemistry B
27 November 2025Our study on understanding photoisomerization using the combination of time-resolved infrared spectroscopy (TR-IR), non-adiabatic molecular dynamics with MRSF-TDDFT, and modeling of hot ground state transients in TR-IR using statistical trajectory methods in an anharmonic cascade framework has been accepted. It represents the merging of several of our research interests together. Congratulations to everyone invovled.
Recurrent fluorescence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon isomers: a comparative study - Accepted in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry
17 November 2025A manuscript using the DESIREE infrastructure to study the radiative cooling dynamics of two isomeric PAH cations has been accepted in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry. Many thanks to everyone involved.
Publication in The Astrophysical Journal
21 October 2025Our mansucript entitled 'Dissociation and cooling dynamics of 2-cyanoindene monocations: Survival of small PAHs in harsh interstellar radiation fields' has been accepted in The Astrophysical Journal. Many thanks to Arun for his hard work.
Alex Cook joins for MChem project
September 2025Alex Cook has joined our group for his MChem project. He will be study natural photoisomerisable molecules such as curcumin.
EPSRC Grant Success!!!
19 August 2025Our EPSRC grant (FEC £1.2M) entitled APP26452: Tuning Molecular Motors: Molecular Dynamics of Novel Overcrowded Alkenes in Gas and Condensed Phase, with Prof. Steve Meech, has been funded. We will apply our photoisomerisation and isomer-specific action spectroscopy strategies to study photomolecular machines, looking at the effect of electron donating and withdrawing substitutents.
PISA spectroscopy at UEA
14 August 2025We have started the rebuild of the PISA spectroscopy instrument - hopefully to be completed and working by the end of September!
Contribution in nanospace roadmap published
4 August 2025Our contribution to the nanospace roadmap, entitled 'Roadmap on carbon molecular nanostructures in space', was published (open access) in Eur. Phys. J. D. We discuss the importance of recurrent fluorescence in the radiative cooling of PAH-based molecules in space.
Cryogenic cyan anion spectroscopy paper accepted
16 July 2025With colleagues at Laboratoire PIIM, Aix-Marseille Université, our manuscript on the cryogenic action spectroscopy of the cyan fluorescent protein anion has been accepted in PCCP (Communication). Many thanks to everyone involved.
ARCHER2 success
13 July 2025Success! Along with co-investigator Dr Pratip Chakraborty, we have been awarded a generous allocation of CPU time (544 kCU) on the UK national supercomputer, ARCHER2, for our project entitled "Excited-state dynamics of technological photoswitches". The resources will be used to compute potential energy surfaces and run ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) trajectories on a series of contemporary photoswitch molecules with technological significance. We have (or are planning on recording) experimental data sets of the gas-phase photoswitching dynamics, which can be directly compared with theory. Our research program challenges boundaries in applying excited-state AIMD simulations to large, technologically relevant and reactive organic molecules.
How organic molecules survive in space
6 June 2025Our recent article in Physical Review Letters entitled "Radiative stabilization of the indenyl cation: Recurrent fluorescence in a closed-shell polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon" was chosen as both an Editors' suggestion and a Focus article. Physics Magazine published a nice news piece to communicate our findings to the generalist audience. The article has been picked up by several other news agencies, incuding Science News Today, phys.org, and The Hindu.
Launch of the Bull Research Group website
June 2025After years of contemplation, the Bull Research Group took the (small) step to launch this website. It will take a few months to slowly get the desired content added. Acknowledgements to FreeBSD for being the best server operating system out there!
