50th Annual RSC Scottish Regional Organic Division Meeting

This year’s Royal Society of Chemistry Organic Division Scottish Regional (Perkin) Meeting took place on 22 June. Due to covid restrictions, the meeting was delayed to the summer, to allow an in-person meeting. The annual Perkin meeting traditionally rotates around the chemistry departments of the Scottish universities and this year’s host was the University of Glasgow.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary, the meeting contained a slightly different format. There were the usual support lectures from the Scottish Universities and Industry (AstraZeneca) but for this year’s meeting, each of three sessions finished with a plenary lecture. The first of these was delivered by Professor David Procter from the University of Manchester who gave a lecture on sulfoxides as substrate activators for C-H functionalisation processes.

In the afternoon session, Professor Alison Hulme from the University of Edinburgh delivered her Bader Award lecture on stimulated Raman scattering (RSR) microscopy. Following this, she was presented by her Bader medal by the division president, Professor Stuart Conway. In the final session, the plenary lecture was delivered by Professor David MacMillan (Princeton University), the current Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry, who presented his group’s research on metallaphotoredox chemistry.

With a return to an in-person meeting and such a fantastic line up, there was great excitement for the meeting, which resulted in 305 attendees. The themes of the lectures covered a wide range of organic chemistry, from mechanistic transition metal catalysis, synthetic methodology to chemical biology and medicinal chemistry. Overall, the standard of the lectures was particularly high, with some fantastic science presented.

In addition, there were approximately 40 posters presented on the day, with the competition being primarily sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The two runner-up prizes were won by Jerson Lapetaje (University of St. Andrews) and Rochelle McGrory (University of Glasgow). First prize was won by Eva Israel (University of St. Andrews). Congratulations to all the prize winners and thanks to all the student presenters for such enthusiastic poster sessions.

Thanks to everyone who attended and sponsored the event, and we look forward to seeing everyone at the University of Aberdeen for next year’s event.

The organising committee (Andrew Sutherland, David France and Joëlle Prunet)

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