13:00 - 14:00
Friday 15 March 2024

L5

Prof Frank Vanhaecke will deliver his RSC 2023 Theophilus Redwood Prize Lecture.

This is a departmental lecture for all students and staff. Please come along. Refreshments will be provided at 12:45 outside L5

Professor Frank Vanhaecke FRSC, winner of the Theophilus Redwood PrizeLink opens in a new window for the development of inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) based methodologies for elemental, isotopic and single-event analysis.

Professor Vanhaecke’s research unit develops novel analytical methods to address challenges in a wide range of sectors and fields, including health, archaeology and cosmochemistry. By measuring element concentrations – within a novel drug, or cells, for example – or determining isotopic composition, or revealing the chemical species that elements are present in, the team can begin to answer important questions. Their methods are helping to unravel biochemical processes in health and disease and show promise as a diagnostic tool.

Biography

Professor Frank Vanhaecke FRSC received a PhD in chemistry from Ghent University (UGent, Belgium) in 1992. He carried out postdoctoral research at UGent and at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. He is Senior Full Professor in Analytical Chemistry at Ghent University, where he also leads the Atomic & Mass Spectrometry (A&MS) research unit that specialises in the determination, speciation and isotopic analysis of (ultra)trace elements via ICP-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). His group studies fundamentally oriented aspects of the technique and develops methods for solving challenging scientific problems in interdisciplinary contexts. Currently, topics of research include 2D and 3D elemental mapping by laser ablation (LA) – ICP-MS, single-event (single-particle and single-cell) ICP-MS and high-precision isotopic analysis using multi-collector ICP-MS.

Frank is a co-author of around 470 papers in peer-reviewed journals, generating approximately 17,000 citations so far (h-index = 61) according to the Web of Science platform. In 2011, he received a European Plasma Spectrochemistry Award. In 2013, he was designated Fellow of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy – SAS and, in 2017, he received the Lester Strock Award from SAS.

Currently, Frank is vice president of the Department of Chemistry at UGent, a member of the Executive Board of the university, and Chairman of the Business Development Center ChemTech. He is also a member of the editorial board of the RSC’s Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry – JAAS (of which he was the chair from June 2012 to June 2016). He also sits on the international advisory board of Spectrochimica Acta – SAB. Frank is married and is father to one son.