Dr Basile Curchod MRSC

Winner: 2022 Faraday Division early career award: Marlow Award

University of Bristol

For the development of theoretical and computational methods to unravel new mechanisms in photochemistry.

Celebrate Dr Basile Curchod

#RSCPrizes

While I like to think about a scientific problem on my own, I truly believe that the actual science only emerges when sharing ideas and merging brains with others on a common challenge.

Dr Curchod’s group at the University of Bristol pursues a wide range of research interests, all aimed at studying how light interacts with molecules, and how the energy gained by the molecule from this interaction can be used to trigger unexpected chemical reactions.

The group uses computers to solve complex equations that describe the physics of light-excited molecules. They develop methods to predict the possible chemical reactions taking place after a molecule absorbs light – known as a photochemical reaction – and apply these methods to study real-world phenomena that involve photochemical processes. A particular focus is predicting how atmospheric molecules may react upon sunlight absorption: a type of information that is often missing in atmospheric models predicting the composition of our atmosphere. By combining theoretical photochemistry and atmospheric chemistry, their research improves the predictive power of atmospheric models in the context of global warming and air quality.

Read winner biography

Dr Basile F E Curchod was born in Vevey (Switzerland) and has been profoundly intrigued by the interaction between light and molecules since his studies at EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland). During his PhD, he worked on developing theoretical tools to better understand photochemical reactions, that is, chemical reactions triggered by light. He carried on his research on this topic during two postdoctoral stays, one at Stanford University (USA) and the other at the Max Planck Institute in Halle (Germany). He then moved to Bristol (UK) as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow to work alongside experimentalists, applying his theoretical methods to understand the mechanistic details of some photochemical processes.

In November 2017, Dr Curchod created the In Silico Photochemistry Group at Durham University (UK). In September 2018, he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant. He was promoted to Associate Professor in August 2021. In March 2022, Basile moved to the Centre for Computational Chemistry at the University of Bristol as Associate Professor in Theoretical Chemistry.

Q+A

How did you first become interested in chemistry?

My interest was triggered by an incredibly inspirational high-school teacher who not only was brilliant at connecting chemistry to its real-world application, but also at highlighting the number of things we do not fully understand: interaction between light and matter was one of them and surely seeded my long-term passion for this topic.

What motivates you?

Satisfying my curiosity, often by understanding complex processes and being able to explain them with simple ideas.

Why do you think teamwork is important in science?

While I like to think about a scientific problem on my own, I truly believe that the actual science only emerges when sharing ideas and merging brains with others on a common challenge. As such, my favourite part of the job is the time spent in front of a whiteboard with a collaborator trying to solve a problem, struggling, and eventually finding a possible solution while sharing a coffee later on, far from the office!

What is your favourite element?

Cobalt – my first work as a computational chemist was to understand the base hydrolysis of a cobalt complex, and I have been amazed by the diversity of mechanistic pathways – involving different spin and electronic states – that this metal could display!