Council Members

Peter has recently retired from the Chair of Industrial Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh which he held for nine years, having previously been a Company Research Associate in ICI and Zeneca with responsibility for co-ordination chemistry. As an Emeritus Professor at Edinburgh his research interests include a range of applications of ligand design to metal recovery and surface engineering, many of which depend on the control of outer sphere coordination chemistry.

---

David Cole-Hamilton is Irvine Professor of Chemistry at the University of St. Andrews. His research interest centre around homogeneous catalysis, especially the discovery of new or highly selective reactions and developing new methods for catalyst/product separation.
He has recently become involved in the upgrading of waste bio-oils using selective catalytic reactions. He is involved in several European collaborations as well as with a number of home and overseas companies, including Sasol  whose European research base is in St. Andrews.
He is heavily involved in teaching and especially in the design of the new Chemistry courses at all School levels for the new Curriculum of Excellence, which is currently being introduced into Scottish Schools.

---

Steve graduated with a BSc in Chemistry, Life Systems and Pharmaceuticals from the University of York and was awarded a PhD by the University of Edinburgh. He carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Kansas and the University of York. He then took up a position as a Lecturer at the University of Hull in 2000 and became a Senior Lecturer in 2008. 
His research interests are in medicinal inorganic chemistry, particularly molecular imaging and cell surface receptor binding molecules.

---

Sylvia graduated from the University of Exeter (1:1) in 1988. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1991, working with Dr. C. Housecroft and since 1993, after a short PD fellowship with Prof. D. Cardin, has worked as a lecturer, fellow and now associate Professor in Inorganic Chemistry in Trinity College Dublin. She was a recipient of a Provost Teaching award and all-Ireland NAIRTL award for excellence in teaching and research in 2008, and held the position of Head of Discipline in Inorganic and Synthetic Materials from 2003-11.
Her research is in synthetic organic/inorganic chemistry and light-emitting materials and in particular the generation of soluble heteroatom polyaromatics.

---

Catherine graduated with an MSc at the Université Montpellier II, France and was awarded her PhD in Homogeneous Catalysis at the University of Exeter, UK, with Prof Robin Bedford. She has held postdoctoral positions at the Universität des Saarlandes, Germany, and at the Institut Français du Pétrole, France. In 2005, she obtained a CNRS-Chargée de Recherche position at the Université de Strasbourg.  She returned to the UK in 2009 to take up a position as EaStCHEM Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, where she is currently a Royal Society Research Fellow. Catherine’s research interests mainly focus on the development of homogeneous catalytic systems promoting organic reactions. Targeted applications are pharmaceutical, environmental and cosmetics.

---

Phil graduated with a BSc from the University of Durham, UK, and was awarded his PhD from the same institution working with Prof. Vernon Gibson and Jas Pal Badyal. Following a post-doctoral stay with Prof. Guy Bertrand at the LCC Toulouse, France, he held a fixed term lectureship at Imperial College London, before taking up a full lectureship at the University of Leicester in 1996. In 2005 he returned to Durham University where he is now a Senior lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry and, from October 2011, he will be the recipient of a Royal Society Industry Fellowship working in collaboration with Johnson Matthey Catalysts (Billingham, UK). Phil’s research interests broadly span the areas of synthetic inorganic chemistry, organometallic, organophosphorus and co-ordination chemistry with much of his research group’s work focusing on the preparation and characterisation of molecular transition metal complexes and functionalised organic and heteroatom-containing ligands for applications in catalysis.

---

Dr. Richard A. Layfield was born in Leeds, UK. Following undergraduate studies at the University of Leeds (1995-1999), he obtained his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2002. After spells as a Junior Research Fellow and fixed-term Lecturer in Cambridge, he was appointed to a Lectureship in Inorganic Chemistry at The University of Manchester in 2007. 
His research interests include: lanthanide organometallics as single-molecule magnets; low-coordinate N-heterocyclic carbene chemistry of iron; and s-block metal complexes of delocalized carbanions.

---

Mike Hill graduated from the University of Bath (BSc and PhD) and, after taking up a Royal Society URF at the University of Sussex, was appointed to a lectureship at Imperial College London in 2002. He returned  to Bath as a Reader in Inorganic Chemistry in 2007 and has research interests rooted in synthetic inorganic chemistry applied to catalysis and materials applications.

---

Ben Ward graduated in Chemistry from the University of Nottingham and a DPhil from the University of Oxford (Philip Mountford).  He subsequently worked as a Leverhulme Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Oxford (Philip Mountford), an EU RTN Research Fellow in Strasbourg (Lutz Gade), a Marie Curie EIF Research Fellow in Heidelberg (Lutz Gade), and a Postdoctoral Researcher in CaRLa (Catalysis Research Laboratory) in Heidelberg.  He was appointed to his present position as lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry at Cardiff University in 2007.  His research interests are in the organometallic chemistry and catalytic applications of main group and early transition metal complexes.

---

Ronald Hage received his Masters (1986) and PhD (1991) in Inorganic Chemistry from Leiden University (The Netherlands).
He joined Unilever Research in The Netherlands in 1990 to study bleaches and stain bleaching catalysts for detergent applications. His interest focuses on the development of manganese and iron oxidation catalysis for applications in industry. These investigations have often been done in close collaboration with universities, such as the Stratingh Institute at Groningen University.
Since 2005 he has been involved in setting up a Unilever spin-out company, Catexel BV, and in October 2009 he has joined Catexel BV full time.

---

Bob Tooze obtained a degree and PhD in Chemistry from Imperial College, London (the latter with Professor Geoffrey Wilkinson). He has worked in the chemical industry for 25 years, mainly for ICI, working in various businesses and locations but always in R&D. He joined Sasol Technology UK in 2002 as Research Director and was made Managing Director in 2004.
He is a member of the Scottish Science Advisory Council (SSAC), Scotland’s highest level science advisory body, which provides independent advice and recommendations on science strategy, policy and priorities to the Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland (CSA) and thus to the Scottish Government.
He has wide experience of collaborative research both nationally and internationally. He sits on the external advisory board of the Chemistry Department of Bristol University, on the Advisory Board for the new Centre for Sustainable Chemical Processes at Durham University, the Strategic Advisory Board of the DTC in Sustainable Chemical Technologies at Bath University and was also Chairman of the Industrial Board of IdeCat, an integrated Network of Excellence comprised of 40 of the leading Catalysis Laboratories in Europe, funded by the EU. He holds an Honorary Professorship in Chemistry at the University of St Andrews giving lecture courses in the field of catalysis.

---

Mike Ward did his first degree in Cambridge where he remained for his PhD under the supervision of Ed Constable on some early examples of double helicate metal complexes. After a post-doctoral year with Jean-Pierre Sauvage in Strasbourg, he was appointed to a lectureship in Inorganic Chemistry in Bristol 1990, where he remained for 13 years. 

In 2003 he moved to Sheffield where he is a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and head of the department of chemistry. His research interests cover many aspects of the coordination and supramolecular chemistry of metal complexes, including self-assembly processes and the structural and photophysical properties of metal complex assemblies. His work has been recognised by the award of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Corday Morgan medal for 1999; the Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship for 2000-2001; and the RSC medal for Chemistry of the Transition Metals for 2005. 

---

Philip’s research interests centre around studies of the bonding and stoichiometric and catalytic reactivity of organometallic and related compounds of the early transition and lanthanide metals, and, more recently, the alkaline earth metals. This research has a particular emphasis on compounds with metal-nitrogen multiple bonds, olefin polymerization and ring-opening polymerization towards “green” polymers. Philip is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a past recent recipient of the RSC’s Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship. He has been a Visiting Professor at several European universities and recently served as Acting Head of Inorganic Chemistry in Oxford.

In this section

• Dalton Division Interest Groups
• Council Members
• Other Networks & Groups
• International Activities
• Forthcoming Events
• Contacts

Tools