Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 March 2007
Organised by Professor Robin Clark FRS, Professor Peter Day FRS and Professor Noel Hush FRS
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Professor Steven Boxer, Stanford University, USA
Steven Boxer is the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University. His research interests are at the interface of physical chemistry, biology and engineering. Topics of current interest include: electron and energy transfer mechanisms in photosynthesis, electrostatics and dynamics in proteins, Stark spectroscopy, the fabrication of artificial systems to simulate and manipulate biological membranes, and the excited state dynamics of green fluorescent protein. He is the recipient of several awards and is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Biophysical Society. More information can be found at: http://www.stanford.edu/group/boxer/
Professor Malcolm Chisholm FRS,Ohio State University, USA
Malcolm Chisholm was born in India, 1945, to Scottish parents and educated in England where he received his B. Sc. and Ph. D. from London University under the direction of Professor D. C. Bradley, FRS. After a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Western Ontario, and faculty appointments at Princeton University and Indiana University he moved to The Ohio State University in 2000 where he is currently Distinguished University Professor. His research interests have been in the areas of inorganic, organometallic and materials chemistry. He is author of around 600 publications and the recipient of several awards from the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is a member of the National Academy of Science ( USA), a fellow of the Royal Society ( London), Der Deutche Akademie der Naturforschur, the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Professor George Christou, University of Florida, USA
George Christou was born on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, but grew up in London, England. He began his research career with a PhD in organic (peptide) chemistry but switched to inorganic chemistry for his postdoctoral studies. He took up his first faculty position in the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College, London, before moving to Indiana University, USA, in 1983, where he stayed until 2001. He then moved to the University of Florida to take up his present position as the initial holder of the Drago Chair of Chemistry. His research interests are in the synthesis and study of polynuclear transition metal coordination compounds, particularly metal carboxylate clusters and their applications to bioinorganic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, and nanoscale magnetic materials. In the latter area, he has been a leading figure in the development of the magnetic phenomenon of single-molecule magnetism, the ability of individual molecules to function as nanoscale magnetic particles. This represents a molecular (or bottom-up) approach to nanomagnetism, with potential applications in ultra-high-density information storage, quantum computing, and other specialized areas.
Professor Robin Clark FRS, University College London, UK
Robin Clark is Sir William Ramsay Professor and former Head of Chemistry and Dean of Science at UCL. His research focussed on inorganic chemistry, spectroscopy and the development of Raman and resonance Raman spectroscopy into powerful structural techniques. More recently he pioneered the application of Raman microscopy to the characterisation of pigments on artwork and archaeological artefacts, his research being embodied in nearly 500 scientific papers, 3 books and 36 edited books. He has lectured in over 350 institutions in 35 countries throughout the world and has also acted as visiting professor to 13 Universities. He played key roles on many national and international committees and on the Councils of the Royal Society, Royal Institution of Great Britain (for 6 years as Secretary), University College London and the Senate of the University of London. He was elected Hon FRSNZ in 1989, FRS in 1990, FRSA in 1992, FUCL in 1993, Hon DSc (Cant) in 2001 and Hon FRI in 2004. He was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2004 for services to science.
Professor Peter Day FRS, The Royal Institution of Great Britain, UK
Peter Day was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, of which he is now an Honorary Fellow. His doctoral research, carried out in Oxford and Geneva, initiated the modern day study of inorganic mixed valency compounds. His seminal publication with M.B. Robin (1967), gave the first rationalisation of the properties of this important class of inorganic compounds, still widely used (almost 1600 citations to 2003).
From 1965 to 1988 he was successively Departmental Demonstrator, University Lecturer and Ad Hominem Professor of Solid State Chemistry at Oxford, and a Fellow and Tutor of St John's College, to which he was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1996. Elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986; in 1988 he became Assistant Director and in 1989 Director of the Institut Laue-Langevin, the European high flux neutron scattering centre in Grenoble. In 1991, he was appointed Director of The Royal Institution and its Davy Faraday Research Laboratory, where subsequently he became Fullerian Professor of Chemistry. In 1994, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and in 1999 from the University of Kent at Canterbury. In 2002 he was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of University College London. He has held visiting appointments at Universities in Australia, Denmark, France and Spain, and at the corporate research laboratories of the US companies Bell, IBM, Xerox and American Cyanamid.
Peter Day's current research centres on synthesising and characterising (mainly molecular) inorganic and metal-organic solids in a search for unusual magnetic and electron transport (including superconducting) properties. His research output over 40 years has resulted in some 650 publications. In 1999 he gave the Royal Society Bakerian Lecture (the Society's premier lecture in the physical sciences) on his work in this field. Royal Society lectures outside the UK include the Blackett Memorial Lecture to the Indian National Science Academy (1994) and the Humphry Davy Lecture to the French Academy of Science (2002).
Professor Clifford Kubiak, University of California, San Diego, USA
Professor Kubiak completed is Postdoc with Mark Wrighton at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1980-1981 and his PhD at the University of Rochester 1980 with Richard Eisenberg. Sc.B. Brown University 1975. He is now the Harold C Urey Professor, University of California, San Diego, 1998-Present. Chairman, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCSD 2002-2006. Professor, Associate, and Assistant Professor, Purdue University. 1982-1998. Chairman, ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry 2005.
Professor Thomas J Meyer, University of North Carolina, USA
Thomas J. Meyer rejoined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as Arey Professor of Chemistry on July 1, 2005. In 2000 he was named Associate Director for Strategic Research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. From 1994 to 1999, he was Vice Chancellor for Graduate Studies and Research and Kenan Professor of Chemistry at UNC.
At Los Alamos Meyer was responsible for the oversight and management of a large part of the R&D portfolio including research in support of the Laboratory's nuclear weapons, threat reduction and energy and environment missions.
At LANLhe oversaw industrial interactions and economic development, intellectual property, educational programs, the Energy and Environment Council, and LANL program offices in Science, Energy and Environment, and Nuclear Technology and Applications. At UNC, he oversaw a graduate and professional student program of over 8000 students and a research portfolio of more than $300 million. He led planning efforts that resulted in campus wide initiatives in genomics and bioinformatics, Arts Carolina, enhanced graduate student support from the State of North Carolina, and through a bond issue, for the science complex and other campus construction projects.
Meyer was a NATO postdoctoral fellow at University College, London in 1967, joined the faculty at UNC in 1968, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1972, Full Professor in 1975, Smith Professor in 1982 and Kenan Professor in 1987. He was the Head of Chemistry from 1985 to 1990, Chair of the Curriculum in Applied Sciences from 1994 to1997, and Vice Chancellor/Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Research from 1994 to 1999. He served on the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology, the Executive Committees of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, the Research Triangle Institute, and the Triangle University Center for Advanced Study Inc., and on the Board of Associated Universities Inc. He has served on the Boards of the Mind Institute, the International Informatics Society, the National Center for Genome Research, the Coronado Ventures Forum, the Science and Technology External Advisory Board of Sandia National Laboratory and the Commission on Higher Education for the State of New Mexico, among others.
Meyer is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served or is serving on the Boards of Editors of several research journals. He has won many awards for his research in chemistry and was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine for service to the State of North Carolina. Meyer received his bachelor's and doctorate in chemistry from Ohio University and Stanford University, respectively. He has published over 540 papers, holds three patents and is one of the most highly cited chemists in the world.
Professor Kosmas Prassides,University of Durham, UK
Kosmas Prassides was born in Kavala , Greece and read Chemistry at Oxford University where he also completed his doctoral research on inorganic mixed valency compounds under the supervision of Professor Peter Day FRS. He was then the Drapers' Research Fellow at Oxford , working closely with Professor Paul N. Schatz ( University of Virginia ) on the development of the PKS theoretical model for mixed valency systems. Following a spell as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Crete, Greece, he returned to the UK at the University of Sussex where he was successively Lecturer (1989-1993), Reader (1993-1996) and Professor (1997-2004) of Solid State Chemistry at the School of Chemistry , Physics and Environmental Science. In 2005, he took up his present position as Professor of Materials Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, University of Durham . His research interests are multi-disciplinary and encompass a range of structural, magnetic and electronic problems in modern materials, straddling the areas of condensed matter physics and chemistry.
Professor Chintamani Rao FRS, Jawarharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Professor C.N.R. Rao obtained his PhD degree from Purdue University and DSc degree from the University of Mysore. He is the Linus Pauling Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and Honorary Professor at the Indian Institute of Science (both at Bangalore). His research interests are in the chemistry of materials. He has authored nearly 1000 research papers and edited or written 30 books in materials chemistry. A member of several academies including the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, he is the recipient of the Einstein Gold Medal of UNESCO, Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, and the Somiya Award of the International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS). In 2005, he received the Dan David Prize for materials research from Israel and the first India Science Prize.
Professor Jeffrey Reimers, University of Sydney, Australia
Professor Reimers studied molecular spectroscopy under the supervision of Ian Ross (ANU) and water under the supervision of Robert Watts (ANU) before completing postdoctoral work with Kent Wilson (UCSD) and Eric Heller (Washington) in semiclassical dynamics. He has been employed at The University of Sydney since 1985 as an Australian Research Council Fellow, sutdying solvation effects, molecular electronics, photosynthesis, and related fields. His work concentrates on the development of models to interpret experimental results, the development of new devices, and novel applications of quantum-chemical techniques .
Professor Gunzi Saito, Kyoto University, Japan
Professor Saito received his PhD degree from Hokkaido University. He was a postdoctoral fellow in USA and Canada (1973-1979), a research associate in the Institute for Molecular Science (1979-1984), an associate professor in the Institute for Solid State Physics of University of Tokyo (1984-1989) and a professor in the department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Kyoto University (1989-1994). Now he is a professor in the Chemistry Division, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University (1994-). He was also a visiting professor in Universite de Rennes(1998, 2002, 2003). He got the CSJ award (FY2003), the Inoue Prize for science, the Nishina Memorial Prize and the SSSJ Paper Award. He was a chairman of the ISSP international conference (1989) and the fourth ISCOM (2001). He has been devoted to the study of the development of molecular compounds in the p-system with exotic functionality.
Professor Karl Wieghardt, Max-Planck Institut für Strahlenchemie, Germany
Karl Wieghardt studied chemistry at he University of Heidelberg , Germany, where he obtained his PhD in 1969 in Inorganic Chemistry (X-ray Structure Determinations of Polymer Cobalt Complexes). After a postdoc with Prof. A.G. Sykes 1972/1973 in Leeds, England, he received his Habilitation in 1974 in Heidelberg (Electron Transfer Reactions of Coordination Compounds). In 1975 he took a position of Associate Professor' at the Technical University of Hannover and in 1989 he joined the faculty at the Ruhr University of Bochum as Full Professor for Inorganic Chemistry. In 1994 he moved to his present position at the Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry as Director. His research interests are in the general area of synthetic molecular transition metal chemistry with emphasis on the electronic structure. He and his group are also active in the area of Bioinorganic chemistry where his interests encompass models for Photosystem II (artificial photosynthesis) and the coordination chemistry of high valent iron (oxidation reactions).
Professor Masahiro Yamashita, Tohoku University, Japan
1982 Graduated from Kyushu University (PhD)
1982 Post Doctor of Institute for Molecular Science
1983 Assistant Professor of Kyushu University
1987 Associate Professor of Nagoya University
1989-1990 Visiting Professor of University College London
1998 Professor of Nagoya University
1999 Professor of Tokyo Metropolitan University
2002-2004 Visiting Professor of Institute for Molecular Science
2004 Professor of Tohoku University
Awards
2002 Award of Inoue Scientific Foundation
2005 The Chemical Society of Japan Award for Creative Work for 2005
Project
2002-2008 Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) project at the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST)
2002-2008 Grant-in-Aid for Creative Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology
Societies and Activities
2002- Editor of Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan
2006- Vice-President of Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry