Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare and beyond

An RSC Café Chimique on Artificial Intelligence (AI) took place on Tuesday 13 May 2025 in the Social Area above the Brel Theatre at the British School of Brussels. Our two speakers were pioneering entrepreneurs of the use of AI in healthcare: Dr Dani Manjah from Professor Benoit Macq's research group at the Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain, and Thibaut Helleputte, founder and CEO of DNAlytics, a start-up specialising in data sciences applied to healthcare located in Louvain-la-Neuve.

The debate was chaired by Professor Bob Crichton, our recent past Chair of the section and the discussion was kicked off, as usual for our Cafe Chimique events, by short presentations from the two speakers.

Our first presentation was from Dani who gave a quick overview of what AI was - and was not - and then described some applications in healthcare. Dani's presentation is embedded below.

Thibaut then gave some further insights to his work on AI and healthcare. His presentation is embedded below as a pdf.

Following the two presentations an extensive and wide-ranging discussion was initiated led by questions from the audience. Issues covered included societal and socio-economic issues as well as sector-specific concepts.

As with our previous debates the audience was seated in a café-style format and gratis drinks and light refreshments were available before and during the event.

Strange Ice

On the evening of Thursday 27 March 2025, the section welcomed Professor Andrea Sella of University College London back to Belgium to give us his 'Strange Ice' talk. The talk was a highly personal journey into the world of the strange solid that all of us know and love and yet which conceals deep mysteries and dark prophecies about our shared future. 

Andrea's presentation took us from a glass of water to the skies above our heads, from the Alps to the winters of Poland and up to the Arctic, stopping to look at a variety of other ices, both crystalline and amorphous, and asking questions about chemistry, physics, psychology, climate change, disinformation and politics. Ice speaks. Can we learn to listen?

The talk was highly informative, entertaining and thought provoking and initiated a wide-ranging discussion that continued into the post-talk networking. 

A video of the proceedings was recorded and will be available soon on the RSC Belgium YouTube channel and is also embedded below.

[VIDEO TBC]

 About Andrea

Andrea Sella is a chemist and broadcaster based at University College London where he is a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry. His main research is on rare-earth metals and he collaborates with several research groups on hydrogen storage, carbonitrides, and nanotube insertion chemistry. He has been involved in numerous television documentaries, including the 2010 BBC documentary “Chemistry: A Volatile History”, which was nominated for the 2010 British Academy Television Awards. In 2014 he presented "My Family and other Ibex" and "Urine Trouble: What's in our Water" on BBC Radio 4. He has been a guest on Melvyn Bragg's “In Our Time” and appeared regularly on radio programmes like Start the Week, Weekend, Newshour, the Today Programme and the Infinite Monkey Cage. He has been consultant and contributor for the BBC World Service's series "Elemental Economics" presented by Justin Rowlatt.

Andrea had previously presented our 2010 demonstration lectures, as part of the annual ‘Printemps des Sciences’ festival in March at Louvain-la-Neuve. On that occasion (pre blog) he gave us a fascinating exposition on oscillating reactions somewhat confusingly called ‘How the Zebra got its Stripes’ - and had delivered one of the lectures in French.

ICP-mass spectrometry in the biomedical sciences: pushing the boundaries of the application range

On the evening of Tuesday 29 April the section welcomed Professor Frank Vanhaecke from Ghent University to talk about ‘ICP-mass spectrometry in the biomedical sciences: pushing the boundaries of the application range’. Frank received the Royal Society of Chemistry’s prestigious ‘Theophilus Redwood award’ in 2023 for outstanding contributions to the chemical sciences in the area of analytical chemistry. 

Frank's talk discussed recently developed analytical methodology including the use of laser ablation – ICP-MS to reveal the distribution of (trace) elements across biological tissues, the determination of metal contents in individual cells and the use of metal isotope ratios for diagnostic and prognostic purposes.

Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is the most powerful tool for trace element analysis, as a result of which it is widely used in many application areas, including clinical analysis. While in clinical analysis, determination of essential and non-essential (toxic) elements in body fluids and tissues is considered a routine application, other approaches have not reached that status yet, despite their added value.

Frank showed how through the use of laser ablation (LA) as a means of sample introduction, a thin section of tissue can be interrogated point-by-point to reveal the distribution of targeted elements in a quantitative manner. Moreover, when combining LA with an ICP-MS unit equipped with a time-of-flight (ToF) mass analyser, a nearly complete elemental mass spectrum is available for every pixel on the tissue “map”.

The detection power of ICP-MS instrumentation has meanwhile been enhanced to such an extent that it also allows quantification of the content of exo- and endogenous elements in individual cells, using either traditional pneumatic nebulization or laser ablation as a means of sample introduction.

In addition, Frank showed how high-precision isotopic analysis of essential mineral elements can provide insights into biochemical processes and diagnostic/prognostic information, as isotope ratios can pick up on metabolic changes with higher sensitivity than element concentrations can and/or provide information that is not embedded in the element concentrations.

The added value of these more novel approaches was illustrated by discussing the results of a number of interdisciplinary research projects carried out at Frank’s labs in Ghent.

A video of Frank's presentation is embedded below or can be viewed on the RSC Belgium dedicated YouTube channel.

About Frank

Frank Vanhaecke is Senior Full Professor in Analytical Chemistry at Ghent University, where he also leads the Atomic & Mass Spectrometry  (A&MS) research group that specialises in the determination, speciation and isotopic analysis of (ultra)trace elements via ICP-MS. His group studies fundamental aspects of the technique and develops methods for solving challenging scientific problems in interdisciplinary contexts. Frank is (co)author of more than 500 papers and the work of his has team received a number of prestigious awards, including the RSC’s ‘Theophilus Redwood award’ in 2023.

2025 RSC Belgium AGM and Annual Dinner

The 2025 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the RSC Belgium section took place on the evening of Friday 17 January 2025 at Les Amis Dînent in Wezembeek-Oppem. The AGM was followed by the section's Annual Dinner.

The meeting commenced at 19h41. Six section members were present: Rita Woodward, Julie Tuppeny, Tim Reynolds, Susan Schamp, Fabio Lucaccioni, and Robert Crichton. RSC member David Terrell was delayed by traffic and joined later.

Seven section members who were unable to attend the AGM sent their apologies and had asked the Chair to act as their proxy for the meeting if a vote was required. These members were: Bruno Linclau, Steven De Feyter, Richard Green, Ari Koskinen, Wim De Borggraeve, Melissa Dunkle and Lance Smallshaw. In addition to these apologies from members, co-opted committee members, Jonathan Norris and Bo Dahlqvist, also sent their apologies.

As first business, the meeting moved (Rita Woodward), seconded (Fabio Lucaccioni), and unanimously adopted the minutes of the 2024 AGM with no corrections.

Committee Report on the Section’s 2024 Activities (Tim Reynolds – Secretary)

The Secretary, Tim Reynolds, presented his 2024 report.

“During 2024 RSC Belgium organised five public evening lectures (most of which were recorded and posted on our @RoySocChemBelgium YouTube channel) and a special celebration event to commemorate 10 years of our Norman Lloyd Scholarships at Cardiff University. In addition, we held our 2024 AGM, had a late summer social walk and talk around the Waterloo battlefield and organised our two annual school outreach events: the Chemistry Challenge and the Top of the Bench ‘European Eliminator’. Our tenth Norman Lloyd scholarship recipient enjoyed their first year at Cardiff University.

Our 2024 AGM and Annual Dinner was held on the evening of Friday 19 January at Les Amis Dinent restaurant in Wezembeek-Oppem. At the AGM Dr David Terrell was re-elected to the committee and we welcomed Prof Ari Koskinen as a new elected committee member. The other members of the 2024 committee were Bob Crichton (Chair), Tim Reynolds (Secretary), Fabio Lucaccioni (Treasurer), Rita Woodward, Julie Tuppeny and Susan Schamp. Dharmjeet Madhav was thanked for his contribution to the committee over the past two years.

During the year, your section committee met three times on 6 February, 6 March and 19 November.

Our 2024 programme kicked off on 7 March with a fascinating talk from Professor Marc Van Ranst on the COVID-19 and potential future pandemics. On 25 April Richard Adams gave us his views on Artificial Intelligence and on 23 May we welcomed RSC President Professor Gillian Reid to Brussels to talk to us about her view of the Future of the Chemical Sciences.

Our activities resumed on 10 September with a special ‘Celebration of Chemistry’ event to mark 10 years of our Norman Lloyd Scholarships at Cardiff University with presentations from Dr Tom Tatchell from Cardiff, RSC Belgium committee members and Norman’s family. During the year our tenth scholar had been named as Zarah Ahmed. The Scholarship initiative has been a great success but with the funds now almost spent it was decided, in consultation with Norman’s family and Cardiff University, to close the scheme and one final partial scholarship will be awarded for the 2024-25 academic year. We hope to hear the name of this eleventh and final scholarship soon.

On Sunday 22 September we enjoyed an entertaining and informative walk on the battlefield of Waterloo with military historian and author Jean-Philippe Tondeur. Our lecture programme continued with a talk from Professor Ricardo Louro on antimicrobial resistance on 15 October and on 20 November we welcomed well-known material scientist and broadcaster Professor Mark Miodownik from University College London to present his new book ‘It’s a Gas’. At this last event we were joined by Waterstones bookstore.

On Saturday 16 November we held our 2024 Top of the Bench competition at the British School of Brussels. This year seven teams from four schools (BSB, ISF, MIS and St Georges) participated and after a tight contest Team Solvay from St Georges were declared winners and will represent Belgium at the UK National finals on 22 March 2025 in Cardiff. Team Baekeland from BSB who won our 2023 TOTB eliminator represented Belgium section at the UK 2024 TOTB Grand Final that took place at Edinburgh Napier University on 16 March.

The results of our 2024 RSC Belgium Chemistry Challenge for individual school students were announced at our Celebration of Chemistry event on 10 September. This year ten schools took part with just over 100 students participating in total - a very encouraging number.

Our thanks as ever to Susan and Rita for developing the content for our educational activities and all the teachers and students who participated during the year.

Our YouTube channel continued to grow during the year with some 473 subscribers. Some of our ‘content’ is proving to be extremely popular. Our Top Three videos (as of Monday) are, as last year, at #3 Philip Ball with 1,566 views, in second spot Plasma-based CO2 conversion with 8,087 views, while Nick Lane remains top of the pops with a remarkable 24,915 views.

We aim to run a full programme of events during 2025 and look forward to seeing many members and friends during the year. Details of forthcoming events can always be found on the RSC Belgium blog.”

There were no questions on the report, and the meeting moved (Julie Tuppeny), seconded (Susan Schamp) and unanimously approved its adoption.

Financial Report for 2024

The treasurer, Fabio Lucaccioni, presented the 2024 financial report and accounts.

 “The 2024 financial statements have been prepared with revenues and expenditures classified according to categories predefined by the RSC Headquarters.

• Current Account Balance (Year-End 2024): € 3,407.43
• Net Expenses (Receipts minus Payments): -€ 2,391.62
• Savings Account Balance (Year-End 2024): € 4,519.97

During the summer, our banking partner (ING) erroneously issued a debit card linked to the RSC account to our Chair, Professor Crichton. This administrative error resulted in unintentional use of the card by Professor Crichton for personal transactions. Upon identifying the issue, the bank issued a formal apology.

Professor Crichton, unaware of the card’s linkage to the RSC account, immediately reimbursed all expenses following a request from the Treasurer. Reimbursement was completed in two instalments due to an oversight in the initial bank statement reconciliation. The residual amount was cleared in early 2025. For clarity, this reimbursement has been backdated to 2024 to ensure that no discrepancies carry over into 2025.

The section’s total income for the year was € 7,415.51 with key income sources being the Grant from RSC Headquarters (€ 4,000.00), revenue from the Annual Dinner, and the Bank Error (reimbursement from Professor Crichton).

Total Expenditure for the year was € 9,790.43 with key expenses being on Lectures (€ 2,871.93 - seven lectures held with a total audience of approximately 200 attendees), the Chemistry Challenge and Workshops (€ 1,718.62 - activities involved over 60 students.), and the Bank Error (€ 2,873.81 - fully reimbursed by Professor Crichton).

Since the total annual income of the section is below £10,000.00, the accounts are not subject to external audit.”

The meeting moved (Tim Reynolds), seconded (Julie Tuppeny) and unanimously approved adoption of the Treasurer’s report.

Chair’s Remarks

The Chair, Prof Bob Crichton, thanked all members of the committee for their continuing hard work and support and looked forward to continuing success in the forthcoming years.

Bob said that he had enjoyed his six years as Chair but stressed the need to recruit younger members to the committee and help with section activities.

Election of committee members and section officers

The following nominations had been received for election to the committee.

Section Chair: Tim Reynolds

Section Secretary: Bob Crichton

Section Treasurer: Fabio Lucaccioni

Committee Members: Julie Tuppeny, Rita Woodward, Susan Schamp

All positions are for a two-year term. As the number of nominations equalled the number of vacant positions, all candidates were duly elected.

Other committee members in mid-term are David Terrell and Ari Koskinen. At the first committee meeting of 2025 Bo Dahlqvist and Jonathan Norris will also be co-opted onto the committee.

Auditing arrangements

As noted above as the section turnover does not exceed £10 000 then RSC rules indicate that no formal audit is required before the accounts are submitted to HQ.

The meeting adjourned at 19h52.

From Gaming theory to Protein Structure Prediction - the 2024 Nobel Prize

On Tuesday 4 February 2025 our past Chair of the section, Professor Bob Crichton, FRSC, Emeritus Professor at the Universite Catholique de Louvain gave us an enlightening talk entitled 'How Gaming theory helped solve Protein Structure Prediction – an overview of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.'

In 1961 Chris Anfinsen demonstrated that the linear sequence of amino acids in the polypeptide chain of a protein contained all the information required to dictate its folding into a unique 3-dimensional structure. Since then, biochemists have been on a long quest to be able to predict the structure of a protein directly from its amino acid sequence.

The 2024 Nobel Chemistry prize recognised the pioneering work of Demis Hassabis and John Jumper who successfully used computing and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict the structure of almost all known proteins. Bob's talk traced how this evolved, from the first determination of the 3D structure of myoglobin and haemoglobin by Kendrew and Perutz in 1962.

Demis Hassabis, at 13 already a chess grand master and in his teens a programmer and a games developer, used his experience with AI and neuroscience to develop AI models for popular board games (his company Deep Mind was sold to Google in 2014). He then directed his attention from 2017 into solving the protein folding problem with the AI programme Alpha Fold, and together with John Jumper they fundamentally transformed this into Alpha Fold2. By 2020 AlphaFold2 performed almost as well as X-ray crystallogra­phy in predicting protein structure.

At the end of the 1990s, David Baker (who received half of the 2024 Chemistry Nobel Prize), began to develop computer software, called Rosetta, that could predict protein structures. At the same time, the field of protein design – to create bespoke proteins with new functions - also took off, and Baker decided to use Rosetta to design a new protein, Top7, which, in 2023, was shown to have the structure that was predicted. Since 2020 he has used Alpha Fold2 to design a series of incredible new proteins.

Bob's talk was recorded and is now available on our dedicated YouTube channel and as an embedded video below.

It’s a Gas!

On the evening of Wednesday 20 November 2024, RSC Belgium welcomed well-known material scientist and broadcaster Professor Mark Miodownik from University College London to Belgium to talk to us about his new book ‘It’s a Gas’.

Subtitled ‘The Magnificent and Elusive Elements that Expand Our World’ Mark’s new book masterfully reveals an invisible world through his unique brand of scientific storytelling. Why are most gases invisible, odourless and tasteless? Why do some poison us and others make us laugh? And why do some explode while others are content just to make drinks fizzy? 

During the evening Mark took us back to those exhilarating – and often dangerous – moments when scientists were trying to work out exactly what they had discovered in the world of gases. His talk showed that gases are the formative substances of our modern world, each with its own weird and wonderful personality. Examples included how seventeenth-century laughing gas parties led to the first use of anaesthetics in surgery, and how gases made us masters of the sea (by huge steamships) and skies (via extremely flammable balloons). The talk revealed the immense importance of gases to modern civilisation.

A Financial Times Master of Science and chosen by The Times as one of the 100 most influential scientists in the UK, Mark is Professor of Materials and Society at University College London, where he is also Director of the Institute of Making. He is the author of the book Stuff Matters – a New York Times bestseller which won the Royal Society Winton Prize – and Liquid, which was shortlisted for the same prize. He presents BBC TV and radio programmes on science and engineering such as Everyday Miracles and How It Works.

The talk was in the Brel Theatre at the British School of Brussels (BSB) in Tervuren, and was followed by a networking drinks reception with Waterstones Brussels bookshop in attendance allowing members and friends to purchase signed copies of some of Mark's books and have an informal chat with him.

Mark's talk was recorded and is now available on our dedicated YouTube channel and as an embedded video below.

Top of the Bench 2024 European Eliminator

On Saturday 16 November, the Royal Society of Chemistry Belgium Section held its annual Top of The Bench (TOTB) Competition to select a team of school students to represent the section in the UK National Finals in 2025. After a tough afternoon of competition the overall winner was Team Solvay from St. Georges International School in Luxembourg.

Our TOTB competition took place in the chemistry labs at The British School of Brussels (BSB) in Tervuren with seven teams from four schools taking part. Teams Franklin and Goodenough represented the International School of Flanders (ISF), Teams Kwolek and Baekeland came from Montgomery International School (MIS), Teams Solvay and Hodgkin travelled up from St Georges, and BSB was represented by Team Curie.

Each team was composed of four students with two students from Year 9 UK (3rd year or Grade 8), one student from Year 10 UK (4th year or Grade 9), and one student from Year 11 UK (5th year or Grade 10). The competition itself was split into three parts: a 30 minute group challenge Chemistry Quiz involving creative thinking exercises; a 90 minute group practical activity; and finally age-appropriate individual multiple-choice quizzes with the students having 30-minutes to complete them.

All the teams enjoyed the competition and when the scores from the various elements were added up Team Solvay from St George’s (pictured above with RSC Belgium TOTB organiser Susan Schamp) were first with Team Curie (pictured below with Susan) from BSB second and Team Goodenough from ISF third. This year individual cups were awarded to all team members of the first and second placed teams.

Team Solvay will now be representing RSC Belgium in the UK National TOTB Final which will take place at Cardiff University on 22 March 2025.

The Cardiff competition will be the last TOTB UK Grand Final as the RSC is discontinuing the event. However, the Belgium section is looking to continue our own TOTB event, or a similar practical-orientated team competition, possibly with a modified team age profile that could help widen participation from schools in our area.

Our immense thanks to everyone who took part in the competition or were involved in the organisation of the competition. In particular to Susan who developed the competition elements with Rita Woodward and to Jonathan Norris for use of the labs at BSB.