Catalysis making the world a better place

Graham Hutchings, born 1951, studied chemistry at University College London. His early career was with ICI and AECI Ltd where he became interested in heterogeneous catalysis initially with oxides and subsequently with gold catalysis. In 1984 he moved to academia and has held chairs at the Universities of Witwatersrand, Liverpool and Cardiff and currently he is Director of the Cardiff Catalysis Institute. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2009, and he was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 2013.

Richard Catlow is developing and applying computer models to solid state and materials chemistry: areas of chemistry that investigate the synthesis, structure and properties of materials in the solid phase. By combining his powerful computational methods with experiments, Richard has made considerable contributions to areas as diverse as catalysis and mineralogy. His approach has also advanced our understanding of how defects (missing or extra atoms) in the structure of solids can result in non-stoichiometric compounds. Such compounds have special electrical or chemical properties since their contributing elements are present in slightly different proportions to those predicted by chemical formula. Richard’s work has offered insight into mechanisms of industrial catalysts, especially involving microporous materials and metal oxides. In structural chemistry and mineralogy. Simulation methods are now routinely used to predict the structures of complex solids and silicates, respectively, thanks to Richard’s demonstrations of their power. Richard was Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society from 2016 until 2021. He has for many years been involved in the exploitation of High Performance Computing in Modelling Materials.

Matthew Davidson is Whorrod Professor of Sustainable Chemical Technologies and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies at the University of Bath, UK. His research focuses on the application of molecular chemistry and catalysis to sustainable chemical processes such as manufacture of renewable fuels, chemicals and plastics. He graduated in Chemistry from the University of Wales, Swansea and received a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Following a Research Fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge, he held Lectureships in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and Durham University before being appointed to a Chair of Chemistry at Bath in 1999. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a previous recipient of its Harrison Memorial Prize.

Chris Hardacre is currently Head of the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in Queen’s University, Belfast.  He obtained a PhD from Cambridge University in 1994 and was an SERC research and a junior research fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He moved to Queen’s in 1995 as a lecturer in Physical Chemistry and in 2003, he was appointed as Professor of Physical Chemistry and became Director of Research of the Centre for the Theory and Application for Catalysis (CenTACat). In 2004 he was awarded a USAF, Window on Science visiting research fellowship.  Through his work in ionic liquids research, he was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Encouraging Innovation Award with Merck Chemicals Ltd and was part of the team to win the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education. In 2008 he was awarded the US R and D 100 award for the development of spatially resolved measurements in catalytic monoliths with Alex Goguet (QUB) and colleagues from the Oak Ridge National Lab and in 2013 was the inaugural winner of the IChemE’s Andrew Medal for catalysis.  He is a Co-PI for the UK Catalysis Hub and has research interests in the use of kinetic and spectroscopic techniques to determine gas phase and liquid phase heterogeneously catalysed reaction mechanisms for emission control catalysis, liquid phase hydrogenations and the conversion of biomass to fine chemicals.  He published over 330 papers and 8 patents and has an H-index of 52l.