RSC IUPAC Global Women's Breakfast 2024 (GWB 2024)

Professor Elise Cartmell is the Chief Scientist at Scottish Water and is responsible for their Scientific and Research and Innovation teams.  Elise joined Scottish Water in April 2016 following a career in academia at Cranfield University where she was Professor of Water Technology and Director of Environmental Technology. Prior to joining Cranfield in 2000 she was a research scientist at WRc plc. Elise is a chemist with a BSc (Hons) from The University of Edinburgh and a PhD from Imperial College, London.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Chemistry. She is on the board of UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) and Scottish Water Horizons and is a Trustee of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Elise remains an active applied scientist focussing on wastewater treatment with special reference to trace contaminants, resource recovery and off-grid sanitation developments.

Dr. Paul Kavanagh is as a Lecturer in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Queens University Belfast. He co-chairs the School's Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team and co-led on the successful Silver Award renewal in 2023, a recognition the School has maintained since 2010. He also led on establishing an All-Ireland network dedicated to promoting Gender Equality in the Chemical Sciences within tertiary institutions in Ireland. The initiative was made possible through the support of the RSC Inclusion and Diversity Fund, which generously funded the inaugural network event held in May 2023. Currently, he chairs the committee overseeing this important initiative.

While I am not a chemist (sorry!) I have experience in the field of “Becoming a Chemist”. My first interactions with chemists was as a cell biologist at the Cancer Research Centre in the University of Edinburgh as we worked together on a drug discovery programme from 2008 – 2012. I then took a 2 year career break - became a parent, and left research. I returned to the University of Edinburgh in 2014 as the centre manager for an interdisciplinary Centre for Doctoral Training based in the School of Chemistry. Here my role was to give PhD students the best experience of doctoral training I could. In 2018 I also took on the role as EDI lead for the School of Chemistry. In 2022 I became Head of Student Experience for the School of Chemistry as I seek to make our department the best place to be a chemistry student.