The Future of the Chemical Sciences

On the evening of Thursday 23 May 2024 RSC Belgium was delighted to be welcome the President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Professor Gillian Reid, to Belgium to talk to us about her research and update us on RSC activities around the world. The talk took place at the British School of Brussels in Tervuren.

Gill’s talk was entitled ‘The Future of the Chemical Sciences’. Gill Reid is a long serving member of the chemical science community and a passionate advocate for our discipline. As she nears the end of her two-year tenure as RSC President she talked about the highlights from her time as President and the opportunities she sees for the future of the chemical sciences.

Gill said that one of the many great advantages of the RSC is that our 50,000 members worldwide represented the whole breadth of the chemical science community from teachers introducing children to chemistry for the first time, to chemists in industry and academia who are pushing forward the boundaries of our discipline. This means that the RSC gets a very broad picture of the trends and issues that are shaping the future of the chemical sciences.

Gill shared what the society sees as the key opportunities for the chemical sciences and our priorities in helping the community make the most of these. There is no doubt that chemistry is a powerful catalyst for change and the impact of our chemistry community is incredible: from developing medicines, vaccines and diagnostics when the world needs them most to keeping our food and water safe, clean and in good supply; creating revolutionary technologies and materials to generate and store clean energy and, most importantly, inspiring generations of young minds, helping them forge their paths to fulfilling careers and lives.

Gill's presentation sparked a lively question and answer session with conversations continuing into the networking reception after the talk.

YouTube Video

Gill's whistle-stop tour of some of the most important areas of RSC activity was recorded and can be found on our dedicated Youtube channel or as an embedded video below. Enjoy!

Gill's Biography

Gillian Reid is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and former Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southampton. Her research involves coordination chemistry, inorganic semiconductors and metal fluoride scaffolds. In 2020, she was appointed the President-elect of the Royal Society of Chemistry, becoming President in 2022 for a two-year term.

Gill became interested in chemistry whilst at high school and studied the subject at the University of Edinburgh, where she earned her bachelor's degree in 1986. She remained there for her doctoral research on macrocyclic complexes. After her PhD, and a two-year postdoctoral research position in Edinburgh, Reid moved to a lectureship in the University of Southampton.

She was promoted to Professor in 2006 and under her leadership, Southampton joined the Knowledge Centre for Materials Chemistry. Reid leads molecular assembly and structure at the University. Her work in inorganic coordination chemistry has a particular focus on the design of macrocyclic ligands that involve chalcogen donor atoms. She makes use of non-aqueous electrodeposition to grow inorganic semiconductor alloys. Electrodeposition allows for bottom-up growth without the need for an ultra-high vacuum environment. She has also created molecular reagents that allow the synthesis of compounds for use in non-volatile memory, thermoelectric generators and two-dimensional materials.

Gill is a great believer in outreach activities and was co-founder of the Southampton Science and Engineering Day, which evolved into the Southampton Science and Engineering Festival. In 2010, Reid was made the Head of the Department of Chemistry Outreach Programme and in 2015, she co-led the Royal Society Summer Science exhibit ‘Taking Technology Smaller’, which introduced the public to electrochemistry as a means to build nanoscale electronic devices.

Adventures in Chemical Computing

On the evening of 20 October RSC Belgium members and friends welcomed our immediate past RSC president, Prof Dominic Tildesley to the British School of Brussels to talk to us about his chemical career and give us some insights on what the future holds for chemistry and computing. He also was able to present 'gold' RSC badges to three long term members of the society.

Prof Dominic Tildesley’s deep interest in computing, and software in particular, began in the summer of 1973. As a young undergraduate chemist at the end of his second year, he had the opportunity to take a summer job at IBM Hursley Park. Here he learnt to programme in their Development Laboratory and this experience captivated him and convinced him to take a PhD at Oxford University that would combine chemistry and his newfound appreciation of the computer.

In the 70s this involved a trek from the Chemistry Department to the Computing Centre in Oxford carrying a box of 500 punched cards as input for a 20 minute of run time overnight – and this was the state-of-the-art!

Following his doctorate Dominic went on to undertake postdoctoral research at Penn State and Cornell universities in the US before returning to the University of Southampton as a lecturer and then Professor of Theoretical Chemistry. He moved to Imperial College London in 1996 as Professor of Computational Chemistry.

Unusually Dominic then began an industrial career when in 1998 he took the role of Head of the Physical Science Group at Unilever Research at Port Sunlight. He remained there until 2012 when he was appointed Director of the European Centre for Atomic and Molecular Computation at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

Modelling first
Dominic was elected President of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2014. In his inaugural speech as President he suggested that:

"the speed and development of computers is now so rapid, and the advances in modelling and informatics are so dramatic that in 15 years’ time, no chemist will be doing any experiment at the bench without trying to model it first." 

The main part of Dominic's talk took us through his reasoning behind that statement that is based on four pieces of evidence he has observed over his career.

1. The massive (continuing) increase in the power of computing - he has seen a 10¹¹ increase in computational power and a corresponding increase in storage in his time. As an interesting aside Dominic said that a current top-end petaflop computer (a petaflop is a unit of computing speed equal to one thousand million (10¹⁵) floating-point operations per second) needs a 10MW power supply!
2. The imagination of theorists has brought forth significant methodological breakthroughs (such as computations of force fields) realised through robust software applications.
3. Big data trumps the Hamiltonian equation by which he meant the new paradigm of machine learning and the use of data models to capture trends in experimental and simulated output.
4. The involvement of industry and their hunger to use these computational methods as a tool for economic growth.

Dominic believes that despite the fact that chemistry is essentially and absolutely an experimental science, from this point forward, it will always be decorated and enhanced by modelling. And following his talk I think his audience at BSB now believes it too.

Gold membership
Before the talk Dominic presented 'gold' membership badges to three long-time RSC members: Brian Sutcliffe (pictured on right below), John Swift (on left below) and Rita Woodward.

Gold badges signify over 40 years membership of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Congratulations to our recipients!

Powering Ahead with the President

RSC Belgium was delighted to welcome RSC President Prof Lesley Yellowlees to the section on the evening of Monday 4 March. Lesley’s talk on Solar Power in the Brel Theatre at the British School of Brussels (BSB) was well received and topped off a hectic long weekend for her on RSC business in Brussels.

Prof. Yellowlees is the first woman to hold the Presidency of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She held a personal chair in Inorganic Electrochemistry at the University of Edinburgh and is currently Vice Principal of the University and Head of the College of Science and Engineering. Lesley’s research interests include inorganic electrochemistry, epr spectroscopy, novel processes for carbon dioxide conversion and solar energy: her topic for discussion on Monday evening.

Just over 60 members and friends heard Lesley describe the problems posed by the ever increasing demand for electricity from an ever increasing global population. To meet these demands will require sustainable renewable energy sources. For Prof Yellowlees this means solar power and this is an area where chemistry is making a big contribution.

Solar and chocs
Lesley outlined how Dye Sensitised Solar Cells work and the research that she has undertaken in Edinburgh to characterise such cells using techniques such as uv/vis and epr spectroelectrochemistry in the search for optimised formulation that can provide us with cheap solar power. Lesley’s presentation from 4 March is available here.

A recent RSC Policy document on Solar Fuels and Artificial Photosynthesis shows how current and future science and innovation could change our future energy options.

Following Lesley’s talk members and friends enjoyed a special drinks reception featuring a ‘chocolate tasting’ courtesy of Centho Chocolates.

Lesley was accompanied on Monday evening by RSC CEO Robert Parker. The two were in Brussels following the major triennial RSC Editors Symposium that had been held in the city over the weekend involving some 300 editors of RSC publications and 80 RSC staff. RSC Belgium chairman Bob Crichton and section secretary Tim Reynolds had been invited to the symposium banquet on Sunday evening at the Concert Noble. 

CSA visit
Lesley and Robert were also able to meet at the European Commission’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Prof Anne Glover on Monday morning. The meeting was arranged by Tim Reynolds and they discussed a number of issues where RSC could support or input to Commission initiatives, including topics such as diversity and promoting the value of science education to school students.

Prior to taking up her position as at the Commission Anne Glover was CSA to the Scottish government and Anne still has a laboratory and personal chair in at Aberdeen University, so Lesley and Anne have known each other for a number of years. Anne, like Lesley, is a passionate believer in the need to ensure science – and factual evidence in general – is at the core of policy making. Clear communication of science is a key element of this.