2026 RSC Belgium Annual General Meeting and Annual Dinner

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.

 The draft minutes of the meeting are posted below for your nformation.

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.

“The 2025 financial statements have been prepared with revenues and expenditures classified according to categories predefined by the RSC Headquarters.

• 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.”

 The meeting moved and unanimously approved adoption of the Treasurer’s report.

 6. Chair’s Remarks (Bob Crichton in Tim Reynold’s absence)

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.

The meeting was followed by the Section Annual Dinner. Images below.

2023 Section AGM and Annual Dinner

On Friday 20 January 2023 the 2023 Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Annual Dinner of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Belgium International Section 023 was held at Les Amis Dinent Restaurant, Chaussee de Malines/ Mechelsesteenweg 113, 1970 Wezembeek-Oppem.

The meeting commenced at 19h35. Seven section members were present: Bob Crichton, Tim Reynolds, Julie Tuppeny, Fabio Lucaccioni, Rita Woodward, Susan Schamp, and Ricky Payen. Also in attendance were co-opted Committee members: Bo Dahlqvist and Jonathan Norris. 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: David Terrell, Dharmjeet Madhav, Deepak Pant, Filip du Prez, Steven De Feyter, Richard Green and Catherine Cazin.

1. Apologies for absence

Stefaniya Velichkova.

2. Approval of Minutes of 2022 AGM

No corrections were suggested, and the meeting moved (Rita Woodward), seconded (Fabio Lucaccioni) and unanimously adopted the minutes.

4. Committee Report on the Section’s 2022 Activities (Tim Reynolds – Secretary)

The Secretary presented the 2022 report.

“2022 saw the section’s activities return to (relatively) normal operation as the impact of COVID reduced and restrictions were lifted. During 2022 RSC Belgium managed to organise seven public lectures (either as webinars or hybrid events), a virtual AGM, a summer social event in Brussels, a fund raising social for our Norman Lloyd Scholarships, and our two annual school outreach events: the Chemistry Challenge and the Top of the Bench ‘Eliminator’, which was an in-person event. Our eighth Norman Lloyd scholarship recipient enjoyed his first year at Cardiff University and we have just got the name of the next recipient.

Our 2022 AGM was once again run as a webinar event on the evening of 14 January and was subsequently made available on our dedicated @RoySocChemBelgium YouTube channel. Two members were elected to the section committee for a two-year term: David Terrell and Dharmjeet Madhav. During the year your section committee met five times on 18 January (virtual), 29 March (hybrid), 19 May (virtual), 13 September (hybrid) and 22 November (hybrid).

Our 2022 programme of talks kicked off on 24 February with a webinar from RSC President Professor Tom Welton OBE on Green and Sustainable Chemistry. This was followed on 31 March with a webinar event on Chemical recycling of plastic wastes with Henk Pool of Cefic – the European Chemical Industries Association.

The outlook for nuclear energy in Europe was the subject of our third webinar on 28 April with Andrei Goicea from FORATOM, while on 19 May our members and friends tuned in for a webinar describing a major breakthrough for the prevention of breast cancer recurrences and metastases with Professor Pierre Sonveaux of the Universite Catholique de Louvain.

Fortunately during the long summer, we were able to restart in-person events with two social events. On Saturday 2 July, we were treated to a fascinating guided walk exploring ‘Foreign Bodies’ in the centre of Brussels led by Dr Paul Snell who  specialises in art and architectural tours. Raising funds for our Norman Lloyd Scholarships was the main aim of a social event on 20 August hosted by Rita and Peter Woodward in their beautiful garden in Duisberg. The sunny event raised Eur 920.

On 29 September we welcomed back both a ‘live’ audience and our good friend Professor Vincent Lemaitre from Universite Catholique de Louvain to discuss the latest thinking in high energy and astrophysics. The event was held the British School of Brussels and we also attempted to livestream the event – unfortunately the webinar feed cut out early on. This event was also the prize-giving ceremony for our 2022 Chemistry Challenge initiative undertaken as a virtual event over the early summer with the students working remotely at their schools. For the 2022 Challenge, we received entries from most of our group of international and European schools with 65 students participating.

On 20 October we reverted to a webinar format launching into deepest space with an entertaining and informative talk on 'Exoplanets or the quest for other worlds beyond our solar system' from Prof Michaël Gillon of the University of Liege. Our final talk of the year was on 24 November when we welcomed another old friend, Professor David Leigh from University of Manchester, to talk about ‘Making the tiniest Machines’ with some extraordinary chemistry and also some marvellous magic! This was a ‘live’ event, but we suffered with poor sound quality on the webinar recording. 

On Saturday 17 December we were able to hold our first in-person Top of the Bench (TOTB) regional heat for a while. The heat was held later in the year than normal and just two schools were able to field two teams each to compete on the day. However, the competition was extremely keen and a very tight contest was eventually won by Team Sodium from the British School of Brussels who will represent Belgium section at the London finals in March. Thanks as ever to Rita and Susan for developing the written and practical tasks for Top of the Bench and the teams for their enthusiasm.

During the year, our eighth recipient of a Norman Lloyd scholarship at Cardiff University, Martim Gouveia Pereira, worked hard despite the issues around studying during Covid. He says that he has used the scholarship to invest in his soft skills which has led him to be shortlisted by Oxford Medical School to read Medicine in 2024. And we have just received news of ninth recipient, Benjamin Condon, who started his MChem degree course in the Autumn term.

As mentioned earlier we now have a YouTube channel where you can find our videoed webinars. Some of our @RoySocChemBelgium ‘content’ has proved to be very popular. Our Top Three videos (as of 17 January 2023) are at #3 Philip Ball with 659 views, second spot goes to Plasma-based CO2 conversion with 3,122 views, while Nick Lane is top of the pops with a remarkable 8,272 views.

We hope to again run a full programme of in-person events during 2023, the majority of which we hope to record and then post on YouTube. We look forward to seeing many more members and friends face-to-face during the year. Details of forthcoming events can always be found on the RSC Belgium blog.

We aim to kick off our 2023 programme with a Café Chimique at BSB on 9 February 2023 on the topic of 'Sustainable Urban Transport'. Further details on this and future events will be announced soon.”

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

5. Financial Report of 2022 (Julie Tuppeny – Treasurer)

The treasurer presented the 2022 financial report and accounts.

“At the beginning of 2022 continued restrictions due to Covid-19 pandemic meant that the first four lectures of the year were online. However, both Tom Welton and Henk Pool had large registrations of 70 and 108 participants, respectively.

Our first in person event was the walking tour of Brussels on 2 July with sixteen participants. Our first live event was the lecture at BSB with Vincent Lemaitre with forty people attending in person and ten online.

Our two annual competitions for schools, the Chemistry Challenge Competition had sixty-five students taking part from seven schools and the Top of the Bench (TOTB) Eliminator Round was in person for the first time in two years with two schools and four teams taking part.

On 1 January 2022, the net assets of RSC Belgium Section were €11,665.28 The Annual Grant for 2022 was received in June 2022 from RSC UK of € 4,000.

Major items of expenditure are listed below:

• Chemistry Challenge of which €395 was prize money.
• David Leigh lecture due to hotel costs.

For the Year ending 31 December 2022, the net assets of RSC Belgium Section amount to €11,710.04 in the current account and €2,103.26 in the Savings account giving a total of €13,813.30.

This balance will enable the RSC Belgium Section to offer a broad selection of public lectures from visiting speakers this coming year.

However, bearing in mind that Belgian Law, the status of the RSC Belgium Section holds the three Officers personally liable for debts arising from the activities of the Belgium Section we will ensure that the bank balance always remains in good standing.”

The meeting unanimously adopted the Treasurer’s report.

6. Chair’s Remarks (Bob Crichton)

The Chair thanked all members of the committee for their continuing hard work and support and looked forward to continuing success in this new year.

In particular he looked forward to a complete return to live events during 2023. The committee had recently decided to focus on live, in-person events rather than hybrid. However, the majority of our events would be recorded for viewing or presentation via our YouTube Channel. The only thing that could stand in the way of this was a return of COVID, but that was something that was out of our hands.

The section’s 2023 programme was shaping up and in addition to the Cafe Chimique on Transport in February, the section hoped to be welcoming back Hal Sosabowski for demonstration lectures, inviting a talk from researchers at the John Innes Centre on genetically modified crops and investigating the role of mRNA in new cancer treatment and other medical developments.

7. Election of committee members and section officers

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

Chair:              Prof Bob Crichton

Secretary:        Mr Tim Reynolds

Treasurer:        Mr Fabio Lucaccioni

Committee:     Mrs Rita Woodward, Dr Susan Schamp, Ms Julie Tuppeny

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

Two committee members are in mid-term: Dr David Terrell and Dr Dharmjeet Madhav.

At the first committee meeting of 2023 Bo Dahlqvist and Jonathan Norris will also be co-opted onto the committee.

8. Auditing arrangements for 2023

Julie confirmed that accounts must be prepared and submitted to RSC HQ by 27 January  2023. These accounts did not require a formal audit prior to submission. If a review/ audit was required section member Lance Smallshaw had agreed to assist.

9. Any Other Business

As noted previously the first event of the 2023 programme will be on the evening of Thursday 9 February 2023 with a Café Chimique on Sustainable Urban Transport at the British School of Brussels.

The meeting Adjourned at 20h10. The first meeting of the 2023 committee has been provisionally scheduled for Tuesday 14 March 2023 from 19h15.

The meeting was followed by the sections Annual Dinner.