Homogeneous Catalysis Award 2009 winner

Distinguished for his contributions to the discovery and understanding of new catalysts and processes for bond coupling and C-H activation.

Professor Bedford delivered his lecture and received his Homogeneous Catalysis Award medal at a symposium at Newcastle University on 21 October 2009.

About the winner

After graduating with a BSc (Hons) in biochemistry at the University of Sussex in 1991, Robin moved across to organometallic catalysis for a DPhil with Penny Chaloner (1991 - 4), also at Sussex.

He was then a postdoctoral research associate with Anthony Hill at Imperial College London (1994 - 6). He was appointed to his first academic position, a fixed term lectureship in inorganic chemistry at Trinity College Dublin, in 1996.

In 1998 he moved to a lectureship in inorganic chemistry at the University of Exeter, where he was promoted to a Reader in Catalysis in 2003. Following the sad demise of Exeter's chemistry department he moved to Bristol in 2005 as a Reader in Catalysis, and was promoted to Professor of Catalysis in 2008.

He was awarded an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship (2004 - 09) and in 2006 received the Royal Society of Chemistry's Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship for 2006/7.