Our 2023 prize winners
We are recognising individuals, collaborations and teams for their exceptional achievements in advancing the chemical sciences.
- Use the gallery below to explore our prize winners, and discover and share their stories.
- Click through to profile pages to see photo galleries, insights into their work, and a Q&A. You’ll also find buttons for sharing these pages using social media or email.
- Visit our YouTube playlist for more video content – including montages featuring each of our winners.
- We have also collected together some of the exciting research recently published by our winners across our journals portfolio. These articles are free to access until 30 September 2023.
- The Royal Society of Chemistry is committed to supporting and improving inclusion and diversity in the chemical sciences, and this extends to our prizes programme.
Thank you to everybody who took the time to make a nomination this year, and to all of our volunteers on our judging panels.
Excellence in Education Prizes
Celebrating inspirational, innovative, and dedicated people working at all levels of education.
Horizon Prizes for Education
Celebrating ground-breaking innovations and initiatives that mark a step-change in science education.
Horizon Prizes
Celebrating discoveries and innovations that push the boundaries of science.
Inclusion and Diversity Prize
Celebrating people improving access and progression for all in the chemical sciences.
Research & Innovation Prizes
Celebrating exceptional people advancing the chemical sciences across industry and academia.
Volunteer Recognition Prizes
Celebrating people who go above and beyond to form communities and support and inspire others.
Inclusion and diversity in our prizes
We want to recognise excellent science, whoever is behind it, and ensure everyone is included, whatever their background or role.
Following the publication of an independent review of our recognition programmes, Re-thinking recognition: Science prizes for the modern world, we are taking steps to make our prize portfolio more reflective of our community and the ways in which they contribute to science by:
- evolving our prize portfolio to put greater emphasis on teams and collaborations, educators, and those who are in earlier stages of their career
- expanding our definition of scientific excellence
- working with the scientific community to expand the pool of people, teams and collaborations nominated for our prizes
- continuing to review our approach to eponymous prizes
- trialling a new nominations rollover process
Since 2015 we have published annual statistics relating to diversity in our prize programme. Download diversity data for our 2023 prizes.
Inclusion & diversity in the chemical sciences
As a professional and membership body, and a leading voice for the chemistry community, we have a responsibility to ensure that chemistry is for everyone.
Our Inclusion and Diversity Strategy is pushing us further than before to increase the diversity of people choosing the chemical sciences and fulfilling their potential for a truly inclusive community. This will – in time – be reflected in the diversity of our prize programme.
- Our recent report Missing Elements: Racial and ethnic inequalities in the chemical sciences paints a stark picture of the realities experienced by those who are Black or minority ethnic in chemistry and sets out our commitments, including:
- Creating a dedicated Race & Ethnicity Unit, funded by an initial £1.5 million investment to lead systemic change
- Partnering with chemical industry employers to create a pilot programme Broadening Horizons in the Chemical Sciences, providing Black and minority ethnic undergraduates, postgraduates, and recent graduates with access to career routes in industry, innovation and entrepreneurship
- Launching a five-year Destination STEMM – Chemical Sciences mentoring scheme for Y12 Black and minority ethnic chemistry students, in partnership with the Windsor Fellowship and supported by the Chemists' Community Fund
- Proactively increasing representation in our governance, committees and editorial boards
- Engaging with our community and partners to listen to, share and learn from lived experiences, and continually challenging ourselves to do more
- In 2021 we released our report A sense of belonging in the chemical sciences – the first ever study of chemical scientists' lived experiences of belonging
- Breaking the barriers – Our 2018 report gave us new insights into the barriers women face in the chemical sciences
- Framework for action in scientific publishing – Our framework for action maps out the steps we will take to minimise bias in publishing processes
- In 2019 we released a report called Exploring the workplace for LGBT+ physical scientists
- In 2020 we released the LGBT+ toolkit – resources for everyone to take part in positive change: employers and managers, colleagues and allies, and LGBT+ individuals
- Bullying & harassment support service – In 2019 we launched a support service for anyone affected or concerned by bullying or harassing behaviour in the chemical sciences.
- In 2020 we published our first RSC-wide diversity data report, which covers aspects of diversity across the breadth of RSC activities