New trustees elected by Royal Society of Chemistry members
Following our announcement that Professor Tom Welton is to be our incoming president-elect, we have now released the results of elections for other posts on our governing Council.
The three new trustees will take up their places on Council following our Annual General Meeting in July.
As part of the election process, all of our candidates gave us some background on their experience and careers.
So here's a bit more about : Louise Armstrong-Denby, Annie Powell and Claire Gallery-Strong, in their own words.
Louise Armstrong-Denby
I have 20 years international business experience commercialising technology within both large multi-national corporations and small UK based companies. I specialise in imaging and detection technologies for life and physical science research and have specific expertise in applying cellular imaging and analysis in disease research and drug discovery. Over my career I have been responsible for diverse product portfolios (instruments, software and reagents), for developing and implementing market focused growth strategies to advance scientific discovery and understanding. I have broad executive business experience, working with universities, research institutes, manufacturers, and the bio-pharma industry. I've led large international sales and marketing teams, in more than 10 countries, with responsibility for revenues >$100M+. I'm equally passionate about developing people and teams, as technology and applications.
Originally from Scotland, I studied environmental chemistry at Edinburgh University before a transnational MSc in analytical chemistry between Aberdeen University and Spain. I then moved to London where I still live with my husband and children, to do an industry based PhD, also qualifying as a Chartered Chemist.
I am a regular volunteer both inside and outside the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). Starting as a Chemists’ Community Fund volunteer (10 years), I moved on to support the fund as a member its Grants Committee and then as chair (2015-present). I've also been an assistant shift leader for the homeless charity Crisis, a business consultant for Grow Movement in Uganda, and an industrial advisor and on the steering committee of the Centre for Doctoral Training at Birmingham University.
Annie Powell
I am currently Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. I have been in this position since October 1999, moving there from a Chair at the University of East Anglia (UEA) where I had been since 1989. Prior to this I spent one year as a Lecturer at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC) in a post I took up in 1988 after spending two and half years as a postdoc with Professor Heinrich Vahrenkamp at the University of Freiburg in Germany. My BSc and PhD degrees are from the University of Manchester.
I have had extensive interactions with Research Councils and Research Assessment procedures (e.g. the last REF action) acting both in advisory and assessment roles. These activities have gone beyond the UK and Germany and have included work for countries from every continent apart from Antarctica.
I have extensive experience of running, maintaining through raising third party funding and managing a multicultural research group and have hosted a large number of foreign scientists and scholars. In return, I have been visiting professor at numerous universities as well as holding fellowships sponsored by the University of Melbourne (Wilsmore Fellow), the Royal Society of New Zealand (Julius von Haast Fellowship) and the Irish Research Council (Walton Fellowship).
Published nearly 500 scholarly peer reviewed articles. I visit and speak at a large number of scientific events per year and am involved in outreach activities at a local level.
Claire Gallery-Strong
Today I work at Sellafield Ltd. responsible for our £2 billion annual budget investment in our projects and activity. Sellafield is responsible for decommissioning the highest hazard nuclear site in Europe. It is also one of the UKs largest construction site. My role is to provide an enterprise view, looking at external market and political trends and examine impacts and implications recommending direction changes to the Sellafield Executive. Prior to appointment to this role, I have built my industrial career over 25 years, working in pharma, environmental, construction and nuclear industries. I have been an executive lead at the national low level waste repository working on national strategy for very low level radioactive waste. My career has developed from my early graduate chemist days in environmental chemistry analysis to a strategic business leader in industry.
Chemistry has always been a key component of my career, from my initial roles as an analytical chemist, through to development chemistry in Pharma and research chemistry in the field of corrosion at the National Nuclear Laboratory. I found that chemistry enabled me to translate and adapt science in an engineering environment and I developed into an operations manufacturing role in radioactive waste management, using chemistry underpinning to improving our processes. I have continued to mentor and support others to CChem and today I am still an active mentor for an MRSC candidate. In my current role, having the broad technical understanding enables me to bring a deep understanding to direct my companies’ future investments.
