Plenary speakers

Professor Peter Sadler FRS

University of Warwick

Peter Sadler obtained his BA, MA and DPhil at the University of Oxford. Subsequently he was a Medical Research Council Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and National Institute of Medical Research. From 1973-96 he was Lecturer, Reader and Professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, and from 1996-2007 Crum Brown Chair of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, also Director of the Edinburgh Protein Interaction Centre and EastChem Cancer Research UK Cancer Medicinal Chemistry Centre. In June 2007 he took up a Chair in Chemistry at the University of Warwick as Head of Department, where he is now a Professor.

Peter is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE), and the Royal Society of London (FRS), and an EPSRC RISE Fellow (Recognising Inspirational Scientists and Engineers). He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Chemical Research Society of India, an Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society, and a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences.

He was awarded the Royal Society Davy Medal in 2022, for pioneering the research field of medicinal inorganic chemistry, "Metals in Medicine", and the design of new metallodrugs with novel mechanisms of action. His team were awarded a 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry Dalton Division Horizon Prize.

Professor Lesley Yellowlees CBE

University of Edinburgh

Lesley’s whole academic career has been at the University of Edinburgh. After graduating she worked in Australia, which is where she first got interested in solar energy. Lesley then returned to the University to study for a PhD on how to convert the energy that comes from the sun into electricity, and this has remained the focus of her research to date. She led a successful research group for many years engaging with fantastic students and wonderful colleagues before taking up senior management roles at Edinburgh. One of the highlights of her academic career was when she became the President of the Royal Society of Chemistry – their first woman President in 170 years.

Many people are surprised that solar energy has a part to play in Scotland but, in fact, we get more than enough sunlight for solar energy to be an important component of our renewable energy portfolio – witness the increasing number of solar panels on roofs. There’s still plenty of research to be done, not only in turning sunlight into electricity and making it an efficient process using cheap, readily-available chemicals, but also in being able to store this energy so that we can use it during the night when the sun isn’t shining.

Her current research interests are inorganic electrochemistry and spectroelectrochemistry, EPR spectroscopy, synthesis and characterisation of potential solar energy dyes, utilisation of CO₂, public engagement of science and promoting women in science.

Professor Paul Donnelly

University of Melbourne

The group focuses on synthetic inorganic and organic chemistry to make new metal-containing compounds with potential applications in biology. In particular, we are interested in the application of coordination complexes and metal-based compounds as diagnostic or therapeutic agents. Exploratory synthetic coordination chemistry and the design of new metal complexes underpins all of our research. Our multidisciplinary research involves inorganic and organic synthesis followed by characterisation utilising a wide range of analytical techniques including: multinuclear NMR, electronic, and EPR spectroscopies, mass spectrometry, HPLC, electrochemical techniques and X-ray crystallography.

Professor Rosalind Rickaby OBE FRS

University of Oxford

I am fascinated by the jigsaw of complex interactions between the evolution of organisms, ocean chemistry, atmospheric composition and Earth’s climate. The extraction of chemical signatures from fossil shells of marine micro-organisms as a tool for constraining past ocean conditions and their influence on climate is fundamental to my research. Yet frustration with the complexities of disentangling the “inorganic” geochemical signal from the overprint of the biomineralising processes has triggered me to seek innovative alternative approaches to constraining past climates and environments but has offered the opportunity to understand "palaeophysiology". Increasingly I am probing the geological past from the biology of modern day organisms. This ambition broadens into probing biological innovation and environmental change over Earth history since the feedback between the two is inescapable. All modern day organisms have experienced a long evolutionary pathway to arrive at their present incarnation and this history has been accrued to some extent within the genome and physiology of modern day organisms. Indeed such evolutionary history influences the tolerance of different algae to ocean acidification for example, or the trace metal nutrient requirements of different groups of algae across the tree of life. So my approach is to read the geological history of both climate and the chemical environment from signals of adaptation within genes, which plays out in the evolving affinity and kinetics of the expressed enzymes, or isotopic signals of adaptation within biologically relevant molecules. I am eager to contribute to climate solutions and am currently researching how the ocean takes up carbon and safe methods to sequester additional carbon within the Earth system.