Fourth Norman Lloyd Scholar announced

RSC Belgium is proud to announce that the fourth recipient of the Dr Norman C. Lloyd Scholarship at Cardiff University has been selected and is enjoying their first year at the university. Ffion Cartwright is from Llandovery and started her MCheM degree in Chemistry at the end of September.

Pictured below, Ffion originates from the small village of Mold in North East Wales, but is enjoying living and studying in the Welsh capital. She received the highest A Level scores of her cohort. The scholarship is given to new students to the Cardiff School of Chemistry who are of high academic standing and a resident of Wales.

In a letter thanking the section for sponsoring her award Ffion wrote:

"I would like to thank the Royal Society of Chemistry Belgium and all of Dr Lloyd’s family and friends for awarding me this generous gift.

It is a great honour to now be associated with Dr Lloyd, he had accomplished so many things in his time as a chemist in Barry, Cardiff, Michigan and Brussels. I have been very inspired by his story.
To be awarded this scholarship in his memory has made me feel so proud and has given me even more drive to do well in my degree. So, I intend to use the money on resources and textbooks which will greatly help my studies.

I am originally from a small village in North East Wales so the change to living in a city so far from home has been very daunting, but I have settled in well. I have lived in Wales all my life, so I have a great affinity towards my country, which is the main reason why I chose Cardiff for my place of study. Also, studying in Cardiff has given me the chance to continue my studies of the Welsh language. I have learnt Welsh from a very young age up to A level standard and did not want to lose the opportunity to use the language.

I decided I wanted to pursue a career in chemistry four years ago, as I enjoyed chemistry in school and had been inspired by the life of Marie Curie to study science. My love of chemistry is only growing through my studies and I am enjoying my degree immensely.

I would like to reiterate my thanks to all that have contributed toward the scholarship and those who have chosen me to be receive it, it means a lot to be recognised in this way and I am very grateful for this opportunity."

We all wish Ffion every success in her studies at Cardiff.

The scholarship

The Norman Lloyd scholarship was set up by RSC Belgium in collaboration with Norman’s family and Cardiff University in memory of our old friend and supporter Norman Lloyd. Norman was himself a student at an institution that is now part of the university. The funds raised provide an annual scholarship of £1,000 for an undergraduate student, usually in their first year of study, at the Cardiff School of Chemistry.

If you would like to donate to the Norman Lloyd scholarship fund, please contact the RSC Belgium secretary.

RSC fund raises for Norman Lloyd studentships at BSB Proms Night

RSC committee volunteers, Rita Woodward, William Darnley (pictured below) and Tim Reynolds were behind the bar at the RSC's stall at the 2017 British School of Brussels Summer Concert on 16 June. Selling a range of alcoholic and soft drinks they helped quench the thirst of the prom audience and also raised funds for our Norman Lloyd studentship initiative and BSB charitable causes.

The Sun was shining on BSB on this Friday evening, burgers were cooking and the various singers, bands and dancers were limbering up. Our contribution to this year's BSB Summer concert was a bar selling a range of beers and soft drinks - all ice cool.... or at least they were at the start of the evening!

The excellent weather certainly helped sales with best sellers being Jupiler beer, Orangina and - surprisingly Canada Dry Ginger Ale. In all sales totalled over EUR 600! The actual surplus still needs to be calculated but we anticipate a healthy and very useful boost for our charitable causes.

Well done to all involved - and it was fun too!

Constraining the Origin and Evolution of Life

On 2 October RSC Belgium was proud to present a fascinating talk on the Bioenergetic Constraints on the Origin and Evolution of Life from Dr Nick Lane of University College London. The event was also the prize giving ceremony for our 2014 Chemistry Challenge.

Nick Lane is an evolutionary biochemist and writer in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London (UCL). He was awarded the inaugural UCL Provost's Venture Research Prize for his research on evolutionary biochemistry and bioenergetics and his current work focuses on the origin of life, and the origin and evolution of eukaryotes. He was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, and leads the UCL Research Frontiers Origins of Life programme.

Common ancestor
All complex life on Earth is eukaryotic, and all eukaryotes (the cells found in plants and animals) share a common ancestor that was already a complex cell explained Nick. Despite their biochemical virtuosity, prokaryotes (cells found in bacteria) shown no tendency to evolve eukaryotic traits or large genomes over the huge timescale that they have existed.

Nick (above) argued that prokaryotes are constrained by their membrane bioenergetics, for fundamental reasons that stem from the very origin of life. Eukaryotes arose in a rare symbiosis between two prokaryotes, which broke the energetic constraints on prokaryotes and gave rise to mitochondria - often described as power plants for our cells. Loss of almost all mitochondrial genes produced an extreme genomic asymmetry in eukaryotes, in which tiny mitochondrial genomes support, energetically, a massive nuclear genome, giving eukaryotes 3 to 4 orders of magnitude more energy per gene than prokaryotes. The requirement for endosymbiosis radically altered selection on eukaryotes, potentially explaining the evolution of unique traits, including two sexes, germline, speciation and ageing.

As our audience appreciated Nick is an excellent communicator and the author of three critically acclaimed books on evolutionary biochemistry, the most recent of which, Life Ascending, won the 2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books. His other two popular publications are ‘Power, Sex, Suicide’ and ‘Oxygen’. Our friends at Waterstones bookshop were present for the post talk drinks and networking with copies of Nick's books for sale. They also took some excellent photos!

Keith Price Prize
Before the lecture the highest scoring entries in our 2014 Chemistry Challenge were presented with their prizes. This year John Eade of BSB (pictured below right with section chairman Prof Bob Crichton) received the Keith Price Prize for best overall score in sections A and B (the two more chemically-orientated elements of our three-part challenge). For the three individual sections first prize winners received a €50 cash prize, second places got €25 and third places €10 with the winner of the Keith Price Prize receiving an additional €100.

Well done to everyone who took part! Every student that entered the competition received a certificate of participation. We will be running the Challenge again in 2015. And look out for our Top of the Bench International eliminator coming soon!

RSC Belgium announces its Chemistry Challenge 2014

The RSC Belgium Section is pleased to announce its Schools Chemistry Challenge 2014! This stimulating chemistry competition is open to students from any school in Belgium, so please spread the word to any appropriate educational institutions or organisations that you are involved with. We would like to make the 2014 Challenge bigger and better than ever!

Details of the 2014 competition format can be downloaded here. The questions will be set in English, but may be answered in English, French, Dutch or German.

The competition is open to school students in their penultimate year of High School (usually aged 16 – 17) and consists of a total of two hours of written test papers held in individual schools and designed to demonstrate the participants’ knowledge of chemistry and their ability to think logically.

Two formats

The Challenge can be taken in two ways: either as a single two-hour paper or split into three stand-alone, separate sections (Section A 30 minutes, Section B 60 minutes and Section C 30 minutes) which teachers might find easier to work into their timetable constraints. Teachers would need to decide on their preference by the time they tell us the approximate numbers of students that will participate in the 2014 challenge from their school.

The common curriculum on which the competition will be based can be found here. This has been reviewed and validated by teachers in 2012 and 2013.

The Challenge papers themselves will be distributed to participating schools in May with completed papers to be returned during June.

Past papers

For your information the Schools Chemistry Challenge 2012 and 2013 papers are also available online here and here respectively. This will show you the format for each section, but there will be 100% new questions for 2014!

As ever, very attractive cash prizes are offered, as well as certificates acknowledging participation for all students that take part. From our previous experience we have found that students felt that participation was a valuable ‘plus point’ when completing University application forms, clearly demonstrating an ‘extra curricular’ interest in a science subject.

More information

For further information, please contact our challenge coordinator Rita Woodward or via the usual RSC Belgium email address.

Crowds and Prizes at Emsley talk

Dr John Emsley's lecture on 'A Healthy, Wealthy, Sustainable World' through chemistry attracted well over 70 members and friends to the British School of Brussels on the evening of Monday 19 September. The event was also the venue for presentation of prizes to students who scored well in the section's recent Chemistry Challenge competition.

John Emsley (right) is a champion of chemistry and his talk was based around his new book of the same name that was specifically written for International Year of Chemistry 2011 and describes the importance of chemistry in everyday life, the benefits that chemical science currently brings to society, and how this can continue on a truly sustainable basis.

“The world stands at a crossroads,” said John. “But what route to the future should we take?” A route to a sustainable society beckons John suggests, but requires a significant shift from a material world founded on fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, to one where materials are derived from biomass. “A great deal of emphasis on sustainability is solely on energy and fuels, but there is much more to it,” explained John. “And chemistry is vital to enable the transition to a bio-based society.”

Student prizes
But a key requirement to do this is more young people studying science and engineering. “Chemistry and the other sciences rely heavily on young people with vision and energy. This is the vital resource that we need to tap into if society wants a truly sustainable future,” John concluded.

RSC Belgium is playing its part in engaging with school students through a variety of initiatives including its recent Chemistry Challenge competition. This tough paper-based test of knowledge and initiative was devised by Rita Woodward and split into three sections: a chemistry multiple choice paper, structured questions on chemistry, and a 'Thinking Matters' paper that was not chemistry based.

Prizes were awarded to top performers in each section with the winners drawn from the British School of Brussels (BSB), International School of Brussels (ISB), St. Johns International School and the European Schools at Ixelles and Uccle. Some of the winners recieved their cash prizes and cerificates from section chair Prof. Bob Crichton at the John Emsley lecture (see above).

Keith Price Prize
The best overall entry in the two chemistry sections was from Krithika Swaminathan (pictured left) a studnet at at St. Johns school. Krithika will be the first recipient of the Keith Price Prize established in memory of one of RSC Belgium's founding members who died earlier this year.

Krithika and her family have recently left Belgium for Michigan in the USA, but the section hopes to keep in touch with her. Well done to Krithika and all the students who entered our 2011 Chemistry Challenge!

Look out for the 2012 edition!