Highlight Seminar Series
The IMSE Highlight Seminar Series is one of our flagship, community-building activities.
For this Series, we bring eminent speakers from around the world to Imperial – to increase awareness of areas where molecular science and engineering can make a valuable contribution. The visits also boost our level of interaction with other academic and industrial centres of excellence.
Since its inception in 2015 we have hosted a number of high-profile guests including Professor Paula Hammond (MIT), Professor Clare Grey (University of Cambridge), Professor Lee Cronin (University of Glasgow), Professor Matt Tirrell (University of Chicago) and Professor Frances Arnold (Caltech).
Highlight Seminar Series
2019 - 2020 Highlight Seminars
25 November 2019: Professor Themis Prodromakis (University of South Hampton) Memristive Technologies: from functional oxides to AI on a chip
5 December 2019: Dr Natalia Shustova (University of South Carolina) Photophysics and Electronic Structure of Metal-Organic Frameworks
23 January 2020: Professor Paul Shearing (UCL) Understanding Batteries from the Atom to the Device
6 February 2020: Professor Marc Koper (Leiden University) Electrochemistry of platinum: new views on an old problem
12 March 2020: Professor Chinedum Osuji (University of Pennsylvania) Creating Soft Nanostructures – for Water Purification to Microelectronics
31 March 2020: Dr David Heldebrant (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Washington State University) A Multidisciplinary Approach to Capturing Carbon
9 June 2020: Professor Beatriz Roldan Cuenya (Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society) Artificial Photosynthesis: CO2 Re-utilisation through Electrolysis
18 June 2020: Dann Frenkel (University of Cambridge)
2018–19 Highlight Seminars
22 November 2018: Dr. Pieter in 't Veld (BASF) Modelling of Complex Formulations and Polymeric Systems
24 January 2019: Professor Paul Raithby (University of Bath) Molecular Platinum(II) Pincer Complexes for Sensing Volatile Organic Compounds
21 February 2019: Dr. Jacqui Cole (University of Cambridge) Data-driven molecular engineering of functional materials
21 March 2019: Professor Mike Payne (University of Cambridge) From the atom to the material
9 May 2019: Professor Giuseppe Battaglia (UCL) Molecular engineering of precision nanomedicines
11 June 2019: Professor Clotilde Policar (Ecole Normale Supérieure) A new frontier in inorganic chemistry
2017–18 Highlight Seminars
12 October 2017: Professor Adah Almutairi (University of California, San Diego) Rare earth metals in medicine
16 November 2017: Professor Clare Grey (University of Cambridge) Developing and applying new tools to understand how materials for Li and “beyond-Li” battery function
11 January 2018: Professor Lee Cronin (University of Glasgow) Artificial-intelligence-driven synthesis and the digitisation of chemistry
22 February 2018: Professor Jas Pal Badyal (Durham University) Function nanocoatings for technological and societal applications
8 March 2018: Professor Matt Tirrell (Institute for Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago) Polyelectrolytes in multivalent ionic media: new physics and new materials
21 May 2018: Professor Frances Arnold (Caltech) Innovation by evolution: bringing new chemistry to life
7 June 2018: Professor Philip Withers (University of Manchester) Completing the picture: correlative multimodal information across length and timescales
21 June 2018: Professor Sophia Haussener (EPFL) Modelling, experimentation and scaling of solar fuel processing devices
2016–17 Highlight Seminars
20 October 2016: Professor Bill David (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) Energy storage and the chemical bond
3 November 2016: Professor Ellis Gartner (Lafarge Central Research) Mineral binders: chemical and physical challenges in cement and concrete science
26 January 2017: Professor Andy Cooper (University of Liverpool) Energy–structure–function maps: designing functional materials 'from scratch'
9 February 2017: Professor Tom McLeish (Durham University) Global low-frequency protein motions in long-range allosteric signalling
23 February 2017: Professor Michael Ward (New York University) Stopping crystal growth in its tracks: pathways to thermapies for pathological crystallisation
23 March 2017: Professor Julian Eastoe (University of Bristol) Surfactants at the design limit
27 April 2017: Professor Paula Hammond (MIT) Nanolayered drug-release systems for regenerative medicine and targeted nanotherapies (This event was kindly sponsored by BASF SE)