Royal Society of Chemistry welcomes new president

The Royal Society of Chemistry welcomed Professor Dominic Tildesley as its new president at the Annual General Meeting on 9 July.

Professor Tildesley takes over from Professor Lesley Yellowlees, who becomes Immediate Past-President.

Professor Tildesley is a world-leading expert in large-scale computational modelling and simulation, with a wealth of experience across both academia and industry. He is currently Director of the European Center for Atomic and Molecular Computation (CECAM) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. He is also co-chair with Science Minister David Willetts on the Minister's UK e-Infrastructure Leadership Group.
 
His wide-ranging career has taken him from academic research in the US to lectureships in the UK, to senior positions in research and development at fast moving consumer goods giant Unilever, and back to academia at CECAM, where his role is to promote research into applying powerful computational methods to problems across science and technology.

During his time in office, Professor Tildesley intends to apply his academic and industrial experience to work with the Royal Society of Chemistry to expand our support for the chemical sciences industry and to forge stronger collaborations between industry and academia.

He also intends to follow firmly in the footsteps of his predecessor by continuing to champion diversity in the chemical sciences.

The Royal Society of Chemistry's chief executive, Dr Robert Parker, said: "We are delighted to welcome Dominic as our President. He is a valued member of our Council and brings to the role a vast amount of knowledge and experience of interdisciplinary research across chemistry, materials science, life sciences and engineering in both university and industrial environments. 

"We are very much looking forward to drawing on his experience and working with him on initiatives to build our community, bringing chemical scientists together from across all sectors and disciplines to share knowledge and ideas."