The RSC Belgium Section 2026 Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Annual Dinner took place on Friday 23 January 2026 at Les Amis Dinent Restaurant, Chaussee de Malines/ Mechelsesteenweg 113, 1970 Wezembeek-Oppem.
The meeting commenced at 19h35 and was chaired by Section Secretary Prof Bob Crichton in the absence of Section Chair Tim Reynolds who had to attend a family funeral in the UK.
Seven section members were present: David Terrell, Robert Crichton, Julie Tuppeny, Susan Schamp, Fabio Lucaccioni, Ludovic Troian-Gautier, and Axhentila Mpali.Co-opted committee member Bo Dahlqvist was also present.
Eleven section members who were unable to attend the AGM sent their apologies and had asked the Chair of the meeting to act as their proxy for the meeting if a vote was required. These members were: Tim Reynolds, Wim De Borggraeve, Steven De Feyter, Richard Green, Ari Koskinen, Dirk Vanderzande, James Franklin, Mike Wijnhoven, Koen Clays, Robert Markowski, and Rashmi Singh.
1. Apologies for absence
No further apologies had been received.
2. Approval of Minutes of 2025 AGM
No corrections were suggested, and the meeting moved and
unanimously adopted the minutes.
4. Committee Report on the Section’s 2025 Activities (Bob Crichton – Secretary)
The Secretary presented the 2025 Committee report.
“During 2025 RSC Belgium organised five public evening lectures (most of which were recorded and posted on our @RoySocChemBelgium YouTube channel) and held a Café Chimique on aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and healthcare.
The year kicked off , as usual with our 2025 AGM and Annual Dinner on the evening of Friday 19 January at Les Amis Dinent restaurant in Wezembeek-Oppem. At the AGM Tim Reynolds was elected as Section Chair, Bob Crichton was elected as Section Secretary and Fabio Lucaccioni was elected as Treasurer. In addition, Julie Tuppeny, Rita Woodward, and Susan Schamp were elected as committee members. Other committee members in mid-term were David Terrell and Ari Koskinen.
During the year, your section committee met only twice: on 14 January and 29 November but stayed connected via email and social media.
The 2025 talks programme commenced on 4 February with Professor Bob Crichton giving an enlightening talk entitled 'How Gaming theory helped solve Protein Structure Prediction – an overview of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Chemistry'. This was followed on 27 March with the return to Belgium of Professor Andrea Sella of University College London to give us his renowned 'Strange Ice' talk.
On 29 April we 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 had received the RSC’s prestigious ‘Theophilus
Redwood award’ in 2023 for outstanding contributions to the chemical sciences
in the area of analytical chemistry. Our first half of the year was completed
with a Café
Chimique on Artificial Intelligence (AI) on 13 May featuring two 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.
Sadly, over the summer we lost one of the section’s founding members and the leading light of our work with schools in Belgium: Rita Woodward. Rita served on the RSC Belgium section committee continuously from its founding in the early 1990s until her passing. In 2010 Rita had received an RSC Award for Service to recognise her outstanding support for the work of the society. We will miss her very much. A social event for Rita was held to remember and celebrate Rita’s life in early October.
Our activities resumed on 30 September with a talk from Professor Gwenhaël de Wasseige from the Universite Catholique de Louvain about her exciting work on neutrinos and other astronomical phenomena. And our final event of the year was a pre-Halloween treat on 28 October with science writer Victoria Atkinson telling us about ‘Witchcraft’s chemical secrets: the science behind the spells’.
Unfortunately, during the year, we were not able to organise our annual Chemistry Challenge competition nor a Top of the Bench (ToTB) type event. But our 2024 ToTB winners, Team Solvay from St Georges School in Luxembourg, were able to represent Belgium at the last ever ToTB final in the UK that took place on 22 March at Cardiff University. We hope to revive our schools’ events during 2026.
Just before the AGM we received news of the last two students who will receive awards from our Dr Norman Lloyd Scholarship Fund at Cardiff University. They are Caitlin Nghiem and Jesyka Dunn who are both in the final year of their MChem degrees and are exceptional students. The scholarship scheme ran from 2014 to 2025 and was closed in 2025 with the agreement of Norman’s family and the university.
Our YouTube channel continued to grow during the year with some 506 subscribers and our ‘content’ continues to prove extremely popular. Our all time ‘Top Three’ videos (as of the end of 2025) remain, as last year, at #3 Philip Ball with 1,830 views, in second spot Plasma-based CO2 conversion with 9,520 views, while Nick Lane remains top of the pops with a remarkable 25,546 views. Our post popular video posted in 2025 was the ‘Gaming theory to Protein structure’ talk from February with some 247views.
We aim to run a full programme of events during 2026, but we need to inspire more of our local members to help organise our events and activities. Details of forthcoming events can always be found on the RSC Belgium blog.”
There were no questions on the report, and the meeting moved and unanimously approved its adoption.
5. Financial Report for 2025 (Fabio Lucaccioni – Treasurer)
The treasurer presented the 2025 financial report and
accounts.
• Current Account Balance (Year-End 2025): € 4,529.85
• Net Expenses
(Receipts minus Payments): € 1,417.25
• Savings Account
Balance (Year-End 2025): €
4,549.98
Extraordinary Event – Bank Error:
During the summer 2024,
our banking partner (ING) erroneously issued a debit card linked to the RSC
account to our Chairman, 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
(€264.82).
Income Overview:
Total Income (2025): €4,654.83
Key income sources:
• Grant from RSC
Headquarters: €4,000.00
• Revenue from Annual
Dinner
• Reimbursement from
Professor R. Crichton – Bank Error
• Interest from the
Deposit Account
Expenditure Overview:
Total Expenses (2025): €3,237.58
Breakdown of key
expenses:
1. Annual Dinner after
AGM: €757.50
2. Six Lectures – 200
attendees:
o BSB Auditorium venue
hire : €496.00
o Speakers travel,
accommodation, gift and bank charges: €1,984.08
Audit Compliance: As the total annual income is below £10,000.00, the accounts are not subject to external audit.”
On behalf of the Chair Bob Crichton thanked all members of the
committee for their continuing hard work and support and looked forward to this
continuing during 2026.
The loss of Rita during the year had been very sad and a great loss to the section in particular her ideas and enthusiasm for the section’s activities with schools would be greatly missed. It would be important to recruit some new members to support the activities of the committee.
Bob said that the programme for 2026 was in formulation and the first talks of the year would the announced in the near future.
7. Election of committee members and section officers
The following nominations
had been received for election to the committee. There were three vacancies for
committee members.
Nominations for Committee Members: David Terrell, Ludovic Troian-Gautier
All positions are for a two-year term. As the number of nominations was less than the number of vacant positions, both candidates were duly elected.
Other committee members in mid-term are Tim Reynolds (Section Chair), Bob Crichton (Section Secretary), Fabio Lucaccioni (Section Treasurer), Julie Tuppeny and Susan Schamp
At the first committee meeting of 2026 Bo Dahlqvist will be co-opted onto the committee.
8. Auditing arrangements
As noted above as the section turnover did not exceed £10
000 then RSC rules indicate that no formal audit is required before the
accounts are submitted to HQ.
9. Any Other Business
There was no AOB and the meeting adjourned at 19h50.
