Final awards from the Norman Lloyd fund confirmed

Just before our 2026 AGM the section received news of the last two students to receive support from our Dr Norman Lloyd Scholarship Fund at Cardiff University. The two are Caitlin Nghiem and Jesyka Dunn who were both in the final year of their MChem degrees and are described as exceptional students by the university.

The two students have now sent messages of thanks to the section and Norman’s family.

Jesyka Dunn said: “I would like to sincerely thank you for awarding me the Dr Norman Lloyd Scholarship. I am very grateful for your generous support and for the recognition of my Placement Project.

My placement was in process and green chemistry, which is the area I plan to continue in as I begin my PhD studies this September. Through this experience, I saw how bench chemistry can be translated into real-world solutions and how chemistry can play a vital role in improving sustainability. This has reinforced my motivation to pursue a career in this field.

Thank you once again to the Royal Society of Chemistry for your support and encouragement.”

Caitlin Nghiem said: “I would like to express my gratitude to the Royal Society of Chemistry Belgium for awarding me the Dr Norman Lloyd Scholarship in recognition of my placement project. My industrial year at Dycotec Materials Ltd was both challenging and transformative, giving me the opportunity to fully immerse myself in an industry environment. I am grateful for the opportunity to explore a range of engaging project areas within materials for the printed electronics sector, allowing me to complete my placement project with enthusiasm and scientific curiosity. I am honoured to have had received this award in recognition of my work during the year, and I am deeply grateful for the support it provides for me as I approach the completion of my MChem degree.

Chemistry has always inspired me because of its value in day-to-day life to innovative technological solutions. This scholarship will help me continue developing these interests by supporting opportunities that strengthen my scientific training and broaden my experience. Being recognised for my placement project has also been incredibly encouraging, giving me greater confidence in my academic and practical abilities. I am grateful for this support as it enables me to pursue research with meaningful societal and environmental impact while I begin exploring the different pathways at the beginnings of my career journey.”

The two students shared the final award from the fund of £132.

“I cannot understate how impactful support like yours is – as you can see in both of these testimonials, the award gives financial aid but more than that a huge boost in confidence and motivation," commented Dr Esther Liu, Legacies and in Memoriam Officer at Cardiff University.

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 provided an annual scholarship of £1,000 for an undergraduate student, usually in their first year of study, at the Cardiff School of Chemistry.

The scholarship scheme ran from 2014 to 2025 and was closed in 2025 with the agreement of Norman’s family and the university.

Witchcraft’s chemical secrets: the science behind the spells

There be witches here! As a pre-Halloween treat on the evening of Tuesday 28 October 2025, RSC Belgium welcomed science writer Victoria Atkinson to Belgium to give a talk entitled ‘Witchcraft’s chemical secrets: the science behind the spells’.

The infamous witch hunts of the 16th and 17th century claimed thousands of lives (the vast majority of these victims being women), but behind the accusations lay a complex relationship between chemistry, traditional medicine and magic. In her talk Victoria explored how plant alkaloids and folk knowledge created potent and effective remedies that were both feared and sought after.

Dr Victoria Atkinson is a third-generation chemist who studied at the University of Oxford including a fourth-year master’s project working on catalytic methodology with Darren Dixon which led to her first publication. She continued on to do a PhD, with Jeremy Robertson on a total synthesis project, employing enzymatic methodology to produce agrochemical products.

However, towards the end of her PhD, Victoria found that she was enjoying talking about science much more than actually doing it and became heavily involved in science outreach – sharing her enthusiasm for science with younger students through practical workshops and school visits. Later, she focused on developing new outreach material and then made the transition to freelance science journalism via a Marriott Internship with the RSC’s Chemistry World magazine. 

Today Victoria works with a range of publications specialising in chemistry, sustainability and research culture.

You can access Victoria's article on Chemistry and Witchcraft published in Chemistry World here.

Victoria's talk was videoed and you can enjoy it again either via the embedded video below or on our dedicated RSC Belgium YouTube Channel.

Witchcraft’s chemical secrets: the science behind the spells

New windows on our Universe

On the evening of Tuesday 30 September 2025, RSC Belgium welcomed Professor Gwenhaël de Wasseige from the Universite Catholique de Louvain to talk to us about her exciting work on neutrinos and other astronomical phenomena. Her talk was a real eye-opener to the world of new ways of observing our universe through 'multi-messenger' astronomy - in particular extremely sensitive, cutting-edge research to detect neutrinos.

Most of what we know about our Universe today comes from the observation of visible light. To improve our understanding of the numerous exotic phenomena that populate the sky, we need to enlarge the spectrum of our observations. Furthermore, adding new cosmic messengers provides extra pieces to help solve the puzzles of the universe. In the talk, Professor Gwenhaël de Wasseige reviewed the status of multi-messenger astronomy and discussed the pros and cons of each messenger to study some of the most violent events in the universe.

Professor de Wasseige is an astroparticle physicist and a member of both the IceCube and KM3NeT collaborations and her main work is focused on low-energy (MeV-GeV) neutrinos coming from transient events, such as solar flares, core-collapse supernovae, and compact binary star mergers.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory was the first detector of its kind, designed to observe the cosmos from deep within the Antarctic ice. Encompassing a cubic kilometre of ice, IceCube searches for nearly massless subatomic particles called neutrinos. These high-energy astronomical messengers provide information to probe the most violent astrophysical sources: events like exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars.

The KM3NeT collaboration is developing the next generation neutrino telescopes with telescope detector volumes between a megaton and several cubic kilometres of clear sea water. Located in the deepest parts of the Mediterranean, KM3NeT is opening a new window on our Universe including research on the properties of the elusive neutrino particles.

You can find a pdf version of Prof de Wasseige's presentation here and the work of the KN3Net project was recently featured (October 2025) in the EU's Research Magazine Horizon.

The talk took place in the Social Area above the Brel Theatre at the British School of Brussels (BSB), Tervuren and was followed by our usual social networking. 

RIP Rita

Rita Woodward (née Blakeborough)

19 June 1942 – 3 August 2025

Over the summer the section lost one of its founding members and the leading light of our work with schools in Belgium. Rita Woodward served on the RSC Belgium section committee continuously from its founding in the early 1990s until her passing. During that time, she held the office of Treasurer twice (1998-2000 and 2011– 2016) and was Chair of the section from 2001-2002. Rita had been a member of the RSC since 1964.

Rita led our work with schools for more than three decades. She devised the experiments and developed the questions for our annual Top of the Bench competitions for school teams – Belgium being the only section not based in the British Isles to send a school team to the UK finals – and also, in more recent times, developed our Chemistry Challenge initiative for individual students.

In 2010 Rita received an RSC Award for Service to recognise her outstanding support for the work of the society. Rita was presented with this prestigious award by RSC President Professor David Phillips (see above) at a glittering dinner event during the 2010 RSC's General Assembly. Previously she had been awarded an RSC Long Service award at our 2007 section AGM.

Rita was born on 19 June 1942 in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, but her early life was in Africa as her engineer father worked on developing the railways. The family spent time in West Africa before moving east, living in Uganda and eventually settling in Kenya.

She returned to the UK for secondary school, living with her grandmother in Newport, South Wales, and developed a strong interest in Chemistry. Her first job was as a research assistant at British Petroleum in Barry, South Wales where she met her life-long partner and husband Peter, whom she married in 1965.

Initially Rita did not consider university, but she followed her passion for chemistry, studying at night school for an ‘Associate of the Royal Institute of Chemistry’ (ARIC) qualification that she completed at Aston University. Rita then obtained a teaching diploma at Keele University.

In 1977, Rita, Peter and the family moved to Belgium enrolling their two sons at the British School ofBrussels (BSB). Rita also joined BSB, initially as a supply teacher, before joining the Chemistry department. She went on to become Head of Chemistry, and later Head of Science, dedicating more than 25 years to the school. Rita designed the very splendid laboratories at BSB.

Rita remained involved with the Royal Society of Chemistry, and in particular the Belgium section, throughout her adult life, and this continued into her retirement. The RSC played a central role in her and Peter’s social life, and many lasting friendships came from it.

Rita will be missed dearly and remembered always with love. For colleagues, students, and friends, she was someone who you could rely on and respect. She embraced every stage of her life with thoughtfulness, energy, and purpose. Whether through her work, her friendships, her family, or her hobbies, she gave her time and attention generously. She had a quiet determination, a steady presence, and a deep sense of responsibility to those around her.

Rita leaves husband Peter and their two sons: Jonathan and Michael.

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 is now available on the RSC Belgium YouTube channel and is also embedded below.

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.