Joliot-Curie Conference 2023

Cecilia Fenech Brincat is the Assistant Director, Research Support at London Business School where she leads the grant support (internal and external); research monitoring; behavioural lab and research governance portfolios. She completed a PhD in Environmental Analytical Chemistry from Dublin City University in 2013. Since then she has held a range of research and grant support roles in both pre- and post-award, initially at Cranfield University before moving to London Business School in 2022.

Nicholas Chilton is a Professor of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry and a Royal Society University Research Fellow at The University of Manchester. He obtained his BSc Adv Hons at Monash University in 2011, under the supervision of Prof. Keith Murray, and his PhD from The University of Manchester in 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Richard Winpenny and Prof. Eric McInnes. He was a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellow from 2016–2018 and then a University of Manchester Presidential Fellow from 2018–2019. His research focusses on the spectroscopic and magnetic investigation of magnetic molecules, with a particular focus on multiconfigurational computational methods for molecular electronic structure problems, including the spin dynamics of molecular spin systems.

Emma is Executive Editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Open Access journals with responsibility for RSC Sustainability, EES Catalysis, Environmental Science: Advances, Environmental Science: Atmospheres and Energy Advances.
As Executive Editor she leads the Editorial team responsible for the operational, strategic, and development aspects of the journals, working closely with the journals’ Editorial Boards and the wider research community. Emma has over 12 years’ experience within the STM publishing industry after having obtained her 1st class Masters degree in Chemistry from Cardiff University (Prifysgol Caerdydd), Wales.

Rianne is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow (2021) and Associate Professor in Inorganic Chemistry (2022) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Before moving to UEA, she began her independent career as a Lecturer at the University of Bradford (2016). She has since been awarded two August-Wilhelm Scheer Visiting Professorships from the Technische Universität München (TUM, Germany) and returned there in 2022 on a TUM Global Visiting Professor Program. Rianne’s research is focused on early transition metal drugs for the treatment of cancer, with a particular emphasis on creating drugs which are cheaper and more selective than current clinical platinum drugs. Her team are exploring vanadium-based molecules and providing an understanding of their intracellular oxidation states to create hypoxic activated pro-drugs, which can switch on a therapeutic effect within the tumour’s microenvironment

Rachel O’Reilly is currently a Professor of Chemistry and Head of School at the University of Birmingham. She got her first degree from the University of Cambridge and went on to complete her PhD at Imperial College, London in 2003. She then moved to the US to under the joint direction of Professors Craig J. Hawker and Karen L. Wooley. In 2006 she took up a Royal Society Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and then in 2009 she moved to the University of Warwick and in 2012 was promoted to full professor.

She moved to Birmingham in 2018. Her group undertakes research in the area of catalysis, responsive polymers, nanostructure characterization and DNA nanomaterials. She has published almost 250 papers to date and has received a number of awards. In 2020 she was awarded the RSC Corday-Morgan Prize and in 2022 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. She is an associate editor for JACS and was a review editor for Science from 2018-2023. In August of this year she will move to a new role as Pro-vice chancellor for Research at her current institution.

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 our 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.

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 of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2022 - 2024). She previously served as an elected Trustee of the Society (2011-15) and chaired the Outreach Working Group until 2018.

Joe Shearring – Head of Regional Engagement: East Midlands. Working within EPSRC’s partnership directorate to work with relevant engineering and physical science stakeholders to better inform EPSRC investments and strategy including consideration of the role of place in world-leading research. Previously worked within a university research office supporting development of research proposals to a wide variety of funders.

Prof Kylie Vincent is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford and Associate Head of Department (People). She is also a Tutorial Fellow at Jesus College Oxford. She has over 20 years research background in biological chemistry. Her research interests centre on enzymes from bacteria that use hydrogen gas for energy. This has led to development of technologies for cleaner, hydrogen-driven biotech solutions for chemical manufacturing, and Kylie co-founded a University spin-out company, HydRegen, in 2021 and remains a Director. She has long-standing interests in equality and diversity in entrepreneurship and science. In this area, Kylie serves as the University of Oxford’s Academic Champion for Women in Entrepreneurship and is an Associate Director for Oxford’s Inorganic Chemistry for Future Manufacturing Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) which is proud of its diverse cohorts of students. She has supervised over 20 DPhil (PhD) students in her own group. 

Tom Welton is Professor of Sustainable Chemistry at Imperial College London. Sustainable Chemistry is both the implementation of sustainability in the production and use of chemicals (Green Chemistry) and the application of chemistry and chemical products to enable sustainable development. The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide a framework for the creation of a sustainable common future, in which all the world’s needs are met without compromising the abilities of future generations to provide for their needs. The chemical sciences and chemical scientists have much to offer to all of the SDGs. Tom is a former President of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2020-2022), during which he championed the contribution of the Chemical Sciences to achieving a sustainable future.
 
Tom is the author of over 150 research papers across the range of inorganic, organic and physical chemistry journals, mostly on the structures and chemistry of ionic liquids and solutes in these. He is particularly interested in using ionic liquids for the conversion of biomass to chemicals and materials.
 
He is widely acknowledged to be a champion of diversity in science and was head of department when the Chemistry department at Imperial College won its first Athena SWAN Gold award. Together with Alison Roger of the University of Warwick, he founded the Irene Juliot-Curie conference series. He is a L’Oréal-UNESCO Male Champion for Women in Science, a member of Elsevier’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion advisory board. In recognition of these activities, he was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2017.