Postgraduate Symposium on Future Directions for Chemical Synthesis
Programme
09.30 Registration and refreshments
10.00 Welcome and introduction
10.05 Presentation from Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl)
10.25 Dr Sourav Chatterjee – “AI-Guided Automated Flow Chemistry for Understanding Complex Chemical Systems”
11.10 Refreshment break, posters and exhibition
11.40 PhD/PDRA Flash Presentations
12.15 Lunch, posters and networking
13.15 Prof. Richard Brown – “Development and Application of Flow Reactors for Organic Electrosynthesis”
14.00 PhD/PDRA Talks (6 x 15 min)
15.30 Refreshment break, posters and networking
16.00 Keynote Lecture: Prof. Varinder Aggarwal FRS – “Chemistry for Automation and Automation for Chemistry”
17.00 Wine reception
Speaker Biographies
Prof. Varinder Aggarwal FRS is currently the Alfred Capper Pass Chair of Chemistry at the University of Bristol. He was born in India in 1961. He studied chemistry at Cambridge University and received his Ph.D. in 1986 under the guidance of Dr. Stuart Warren. After postdoctoral studies (1986-1988) under Prof. Gilbert Stork, Columbia University, he returned to the UK as a Lecturer at Bath University. In 1991 he moved to Sheffield University, where he was promoted to Professor in in 1997. In 2000 he moved to Bristol University where he holds the Chair in Synthetic Chemistry. He has received numerous awards including RSC Hickinbottom Fellowship (1997); RSC Corday Morgan Prize (1999); Novartis Lecturship (1999/2000); Liebigs Lecturship (Germany), (1999/2000) (inaugural); RSC Green Chemistry Award (2003); RSC Reaction Mechanism Award (2004); RSC/GDCh-Alexander Todd-Hans Krebs Lectureship (2007) (inaugural); RSC Tilden Lecturer (2007), RSC Stereochemistry Award (2009); GSK, AZ & Pfizer prize for Process Research (2009); Elected Fellow of the Royal Society (2012). His current research interests centre on the development of new catalytic processes for asymmetric synthesis.
Prof. Richard Brown is currently a Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Southampton. He received his first degree (B.Sc. hons) in Chemistry from the University of Southampton in 1990. He stayed in Southampton for postgraduate studies under the guidance of Professor Kocienski F.R.S., obtaining his Ph.D. in 1994 for his thesis “Furan Oxidation Applied to the Synthesis of Salinomycin”. He moved to the University of California Berkeley in 1994 to take up a NATO postdoctoral fellowship in Professor Clayton Heathcock’s research group to work on the syntheses of the alkaloids petrosin C and petrosin D. On his return to the UK in 1996, he took up a six-month sabbatical at Pfizer Central Research before being awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to join the faculty at the University of Southampton. He was promoted to Professor in 2010. His research interests revolve around synthetic organic chemistry and its application, and he is author and co-author of >100 journal and book articles. Current projects include the synthesis of natural products, asymmetric synthesis, and electroorganic synthesis in flow reactors.
Dr Sourav Chatterjee is currently a Lecturer of Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath. His research interests lie in the design and application of automation, flow chemical systems and machine learning to understand and study complex chemical problems. He obtained his MSc (with distinction) and PhD from Queen`s University of Belfast for the design of radiofrequency-heated microreactors for fine chemical synthesis. He was subsequently appointed to a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Max Planck institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, where he developed automated flow reactors and machine learning algorithms to predict the stereoselectivity of glycosylation reactions. He also developed a novel radial synthesis concept for multistep, flow-based organic synthesis. He next moved to ETH Zurich as a Team Leader of Automation and AI in chemistry and catalysis, where he developed machine learning workflows for Swiss Catalysis Hub East. From February 2023, Sourav began his independent academic career as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Bath.