IUPAC Global Women’s Breakfast 2022 - Empowering Diversity in Science

Dr Clara Barker is a thin-film material scientist who manages the Centre for Applied Superconductivity, in the materials department at Oxford University. Clara Barker is the chair of the LGBT+ advisory group to Oxford University and the Dean for Equality and Diversity at Linacre College, as well as a member of both the Royal Society and the Girls School Association’s Equality and Diversity Committees. In 2018 she won the first VC’s diversity role model award from the University. She runs a youth group for LGBTI+ young people, is a Stonewall school role model, and presented a talk at a TEDxWomen London event in 2018. For her volunteer work she won a Points of Light Award from the UK Prime Minister in 2017.

Pooja grew up on the foothills of Mount Kenya. Her academic career started with a First class (Hons) MChem (Chemistry) degree from Coventry University which included an industrial placement at GlaxoSmithKline. She then went on to pursue a PhD at the University of Warwick with the late Prof. Mark Rodger. This was part funded by industry (Cabot Speciality Fluids) and by the Warwick Postgraduate Scholarship.
In 2005, Pooja moved to the Dept. of Physics and Materials Science at Uppsala University, Sweden, working on a FP7 project looking at diagnosing malaria using a magneto-optical technique which would be fast, efficient and reliable and most importantly non-invasive. After 3 ½ years she joined the University of Bath as an EPSRC Research Officer working on computational simulations of energy materials with applications in Sustainable Technologies such as Li Ion Batteries, Fuel Cells and Thin Film PV materials. Since then she has been Senior Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, before joining the team at Loughborough in 2015 and is now a senior lecturer in computational materials science.  In 2021 she  received the Royal Society Short Industry Fellowship to work with Industry as well as join the Royal Society of Chemistry Inclusion and Diversity Committee. More recently, she has taken over as the Director for EDI for the School of Science at Loughborough. Among her many recent accolades, she also sits on the UKRI-EPSRC e-infrastructure Strategic Advisory Team.
Pooja truly believes inclusivity is about recognising the importance of every individual in shaping the success of an institution. Recognition and acceptance empowers people to believe they can achieve the unimaginable and this can be incredibly powerful for the individual as well as for the institute.

Celine is part of the innovations team at Polymateria and her work as a commercial testing coordinator focuses on the management of physical and chemical testing of biotransforming plastics in the plastic packaging industry in a more customer focused perspective. She is responsible for managing the deliverables and milestones of her customers who are interested in using the technology in their products, while communicating and simplifying the results to stakeholders and investors. Celine is also responsible for managing ecotoxicity tests to ensure the biotransformed plastic wax is environmentally safe, troubleshooting of products and plays a key role in the product development sector for research and development of new products. Celine also partakes in tours to potential new customers and investors to show and demonstrate the performance of the technology. Celine obtained her degree in biological resources at the Institute of Engineering in Porto, Portugal which provided her the skills to ensure a rational and sustainable management of biological resources, as well as, the development of bioproducts for the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry. She also has a MSc in Environmental Engineering from Cranfield University.  In addition, Celine performed a European Project Semester at the School of Engineering in Tarbes, France which focused on the development of a bio-based conductive adhesive.  She is a mentor for Destination STEMM – Chemical Sciences - which is funded by the RSC and Windsor Fellowship to support minority ethnic chemistry students.

Helen joined the Royal Society of Chemistry after completing a degree and PhD in Chemistry. She is a Chartered Chemist and a Chartered Scientist.  At the RSC, she has led many of its strategic functions and was appointed Deputy CEO in 2015.  Helen is a champion for the profession and has commissioned bold campaigns such as Breaking the Barriers and work to support Technicians.
From 2018 - 2021 Helen was Chair of the Science Council, a UK organisation for the advancement of the science profession.  She took up the role of Acting CEO of the Royal Society of Chemistry in January 2020 and was appointed Chief Executive in June 2021.

Ale is a chemical engineer with a PhD in materials science. Her independent career began as an Assistant Professor in Argentina, before joining Cambridge University under a Royal Society Visiting Fellowship. She has published over 50 scientific papers in the field of heterogeneous catalysis and, since joining RSC, several influential policy reports covering chemistry at the interfaces, international development, and I&D. Previous roles included managing RSC international work in India and Latin America and the setting up and leading the Pan Africa Chemistry Network. More recently, she led the Future of the Chemical Sciences initiative based on scenario planning to guide the development of the RSC long-term strategy. 
Her RSC I&D work resulted in strategic reports aimed at driving change towards an inclusive chemistry culture. Examples are the reports - Diversity Landscape in the Chemical Sciences (2018), Breaking the Barriers (2018), LGBT+ climate for the physical sciences (2019), Is publishing in the chemical sciences gender biased? (2019), A framework for action in scientific publishing (2020), recognized by two awards from the PRCA in 2019 and 2020.  Also, as part of RSC’s commitment to improve I&D, the RSC Bullying and Harassment support line was launched and grant schemes, focused on career development for individual chemists with caring responsibilities, and for disabled chemists.
She is an FRSC, a life fellow of the Chemical Research Society of India, a member of IUPAC and an honorary Fellow of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia.

Gill is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Southampton and served as Head of School between 2016 and 2020.
 
Born and raised in Central Scotland, Gill obtained both her BSc and PhD at the University of Edinburgh, before being appointed to a lectureship in Chemistry at Southampton in 1991. She became professor in 2006.
 
Her group’s research focuses on synthetic coordination and organometallic chemistry and is motivated by both fundamental studies of new ligand types that explore the influence of metal-ligand combinations on properties and reactivity, as well as more application driven targets. Particular areas of interest are developing reagents for use in chemical vapour deposition and electrodeposition for the controlled growth of functional semiconducting thin film and nanostructured materials. Metal chalcogenides, in particular, have important technological applications, such as solid-state memory, thermoelectric energy harvesting and battery materials. She also works on the development of metal-chelate scaffolds for binding the fluorine-18 radioisotope towards new positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agents and has published over 350 research papers.
 
She is currently President-Elect of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2020-22). She previously served as an elected Trustee of the Society (2011-15) and chaired the Outreach Working Group until 2018.