The Dalton Communities history, strategy and governance

Our strategy

Dalton Community supports the study and dissemination of inorganic chemistry in all its forms. Our aims are to build and nurture effective scientific networks, to support inorganic chemists (with a focus on early career researchers), and to raise the profile of inorganic chemistry to the wider community and to influential external stakeholders.

Meet the members of the Council who are responsible for ensuring that the Community fulfils its purpose.

Professor Michael Ward

President

Mike obtained a BA in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 1986. This was followed by a PhD from the same institution in 1989, after which he became a postdoctoral research associate at the Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg in the group of Jean-Pierre Sauvage.

Mike Ward (1).jpg

In 1990 Mike was appointed as Lecturer at the University of Bristol, where he was subsequently promoted to Reader and Professor. In 2003 he was appointed as professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Sheffield. He was Head of Department of Chemistry in Sheffield from 2007 to 2011 and again in 2015. Mike moved to the University of Warwick as Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Head of Department of Chemistry in August 2017.

His research focuses on coordination and supramolecular chemistry, with emphases on photophysical properties of metal complex assemblies, and self-assembly and host-guest chemistry of coordination cage systems. He is the recipient of a number of awards including the RSC Corday-Morgan Medal and Prize (1999); RSC Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship (2000-2001); RSC Industrially-sponsored award for Chemistry of the Transition Metals (2005), RSC Prize for Supramolecular Chemistry (2016).

Claire Carmalt

President Elect

Claire Carmalt graduated from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne with a BSc in chemistry in 1992. She remained at Newcastle to do her PhD with Dr Nick Norman on 'Synthetic and structural studies involving the heavier elements of groups 13 and 15'. She then spent just over two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the 新月直播app下载 and Technology Center, University of Texas at Austin under the supervision of Professors Alan Cowley FRS and Mike White.

Claire Carmalt

Claire's postdoctoral work, which involved the synthesis of novel precursors for thin film growth, stimulated her interest in materials chemistry. In 1997, she was awarded a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship and she moved to University College London (UCL). She started a lectureship at UCL in 2001 and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2002, Reader in 2004 and Professor in 2009. She was Head of the Inorganic & Materials Section in the department from 2010-2016 and Vice-Dean(Education), for the Mathematical and Physical 新月直播app下载s faculty at UCL.

In 2016 she became the 18th Head of Department for Chemistry and the first woman appointed to the position. She has also been awarded a number of prizes including the RSC 2000 Meldola Medal and Prize, the RSC 2019 Applied Inorganic Chemistry, a One UCL Leadership Award for Outstanding Contribution in 2021 and the RSC 2024 Tilden prize.

James Coverdale

Elected member

James Coverdale is a Chartered Chemist (CChem) and Assistant Professor in Pharmaceutical Biology at the University of Birmingham. Working within the field of metals in medicine, his group is developing new techniques to study bioinorganic chemistry in living systems.

James Coverdale

Dr George Kostakis

Elected member

George Kostakis is a Senior Lecturer at University of Sussex. His group develops unconventional catalytic methods involving Cu(II) or bimetallic compounds and complexes for biological applications.

Dr Kostakis studied Chemistry (BSc) and became familiar with key areas of organic chemistry (MSc) and coordination chemistry (PhD) at the University of Ioannina (Greece). He then joined the Institutes of Inorganic Chemistry and Nanotechnology, KIT, (Germany) with Prof. Annie K. Powell to work on various aspects of supramolecular chemistry.

In 2013, George was appointed Senior Lecturer at the University of Sussex. George’s group at Sussex focuses on groundbreaking aspects of coordination chemistry. It crosses boundaries by developing 3d/4f polymetallic complexes and low dimensionality benzotriazole-based coordination polymers as pre-catalysts, Cu(II) complexes for alkyne activation via radical pathway, molecular complexes for biological applications, and the Polynuclear Inorganic Clusters Database.

Dr Izilda Bagatin

Elected member

Izilda A. Bagatin is an Associate Professor of inorganic chemistry at Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp – Universidade Federal de São Paulo -ICAQF).

Her research focuses on the synthesis and application of systems for use as ionic sensors (chemosensors), electroluminescent films (OLEDs), and the application of inorganic complexes in bioinorganic chemistry.

Izilda A Bagatin.jpg

Izilda completed her Ph.D. in 1995, under the supervision of Prof. Henrique E. Toma at Universidade de São Paulo (USP), studying Ru-nitrosyls complexes with imine ligands.

Then, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow (1997) with Professor Dominique Matt at the Universitè Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg –France, studying calixarenes chemistry. Subsequently, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Henrique Toma (1998-2001) at Universidade de Sâo Paulo, preparing calixarenes ligands as a luminescent system for application in OLEDs.

Since 2009 she has been researching and teaching at UNIFESP-São Paulo, becoming Associate Professor in 2016. Her research focuses on developing supramolecular, organic, and inorganic systems for application in ionic sensors (chemosensors) and luminescent molecules for application in electroluminescent films (OLEDs).

Also, she has worked on inorganic complexes for application in bioinorganic chemistry. She is a Member of the Brazilian Chemistry Society (Sociedade Brasileira de Química) and a member of a collegiate course in Chemistry (Federal University of São Paulo). She is currently a Vice-coordinator of the PPgECM (postgraduate program in Chemistry and Material 新月直播app下载).

Dr Andryj Borys

Elected member

Andryj Borys is a postdoctoral researcher at Universität Bern, Switzerland. He received his undergraduate degree in Forensic Chemistry from the University of Kent in 2015, and continued there for a PhD under the supervision of Dr. Ewan Clark to explore the synthesis and magnetic properties of main-group heterocyclic radicals.

Andrew Borys

In 2018, Andryj moved to the University of Edinburgh as a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Dr. Michael Cowley to investigate the synthesis and reactivity of unsaturated and aromatic main-group compounds. Following this, Andryj spent 9 months at York University (Toronto, Canada) working with Professors Thomas Baumgartner and Chris Caputo to explore the applications of fluorescent phospholes.

Since 2020, Andryj has been a postdoctoral researcher at Universität Bern (Switzerland) under the supervision of Professor Eva Hevia. His research investigates the synthesis, structure and bonding of alkali-metal nickelates, with a focus on catalytic applications and mechanistic studies.

Dr Shaikh M. Mobin

Elected member

Shaikh Mobin is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at IIT Indore. Dr. Shaikh accomplished his Bachelor’s and Master’s from Wilson College, University of Mumbai with a major in Chemistry and his PhD from Mumbai University in Chemistry. In 2012, he joined IIT Indore and works as a Professor in the Department of Chemistry.

Dr Mobin's research group works in a wide area of multi-disciplinary research with a focus on Inorganic Materials Chemistry. Areas of interest include solid-state structural reactivity, MOF-based supercapacitors for energy storage, catalysis, sensing and bio-medical applications, metal oxide nanomaterials derived by employing metal complexes / MOFs as single-source molecular precursors for catalysts in various organic transformation, and electrocatalysts for energy conversion.

Design and synthesis of greener c-dots for a wide range of bioimaging and biosensing applications, and lead-free solar cells for cleaner energy harvesting are major area of focus by the group.

Sunil Krishnan

Elected Member

Sunil Krishnan is a professor of radiation oncology at the University of Texas Health 新月直播app下载 Center in Houston, Texas. He received his medical school training at Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, and radiation oncology residency training at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Sunil Krishnan

In 2004, Sunil moved to MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston as an assistant professor of radiation oncology and rose to full professor there. He co-directed a T32 training grant on nanotechnology applications in cancer. After a short stint (2019-2022) at Mayo Clinic Florida, he returned to Houston.

His laboratory advances clinically translational strategies to sensitize tumors to radiation therapy and protect normal tissues from radiation injury, frequently using carbon-based, organic, inorganic, hybrid, and multilayered nanoparticle constructs.

A major focus is the use of gold nanoparticles as radiosensitizers via radiation dose enhancement and/or photothermal activation, and the use of designer nanoparticles with improved pharmacokinetic and payload delivery characteristics via stimulus-responsiveness, bio-inspired molecular mimicry, Trojan-horse approaches, and phagocytosis evasion strategies.

Alison Parkin

Appointed Member

Alison started her independent research career as a Merton College Junior Research Fellow in Chemistry at Oxford (2008-2012), before moving to York as an Anniversary Lecturer. Prior to this she did her MChem (2000-2004) and DPhil (2004-2008) studies in Chemistry at the University of Oxford.

Parkin Alison

Alison's PhD thesis was titled "Electrochemical Investigations of Electrocatalysis by Microbial Oxidoreductases", and her supervisor was Professor Fraser Armstrong. She was promoted to Professor in 2023 and enjoys leading an interdisciplinary research group that spans computer scientists, biochemists and materials development. Alison won a 2022 ERC Consolidator Grant and has been awarded the 2019 Roger Parson Medal, the 2019 Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship and a 2013 Biochemical Society Early Career Research Award.

Dr Ulrich Hintermair

Appointed Member

Dr Hintermair is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Reader in Chemistry at the University of Bath. He studied Chemistry at the University of Würzburg (Germany) and Chemical Reaction Engineering at the CPE Lyon (France), finishing with a Master project at the University of St Andrews (UK) in 2007.

Ulrich Hintermair

In 2010, after a PhD on organometallic catalysis in IL/scCO2 biphasic systems with Walter Leitner at RWTH Aachen University (Germany), Ulrich moved to Yale University (USA) for a PostDoc with Bob Crabtree on water and C-H oxidation chemistry.

In 2013 he took up an independent Whorrod Research Fellowship at the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies at the University of Bath, winning a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2016 and being promoted to Reader in 2019.

Research in his lab concerns all aspects of molecular catalysis with metal complexes, with a particular focus on in-situ and operando methods for elucidating complex reaction mechanisms. For this purpose, his group has pioneered the development and use of multi-nuclear high resolution Flow新月直播app下载 spectroscopy techniques coupled with orthogonal online methods. Electrocatalysis for energy conversion and the organometallic chemistry of dinucleating ligands, pentalenides in particular, are also investigated in his lab.

Uli is the founder and scientific director of Bath’s , member of the steering group of the , and committee member of the RSC IRM-DG. He is a former Humboldt fellow, and recent honours include the 2016 Willi Keim Prize, the 2016 Sir John Meurig Thomas Medal, the 2018 Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms Young Academic Award, and the 2021 Jochen Block Prize.

Professor Russell Morris

Ex-Officio (Chair, Dalton Transactions Editorial Board)

Russell Morris gained B.A. and D. Phil degrees at the University of Oxford and is currently Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews.

His research interests lie in the synthesis, characterisation and application of porous and layered materials including zeolites and metal-organic frameworks.

Russell Morris

Russell's recent work on developing the ADOR approach to the preparation of zeolites offers routes to exciting materials that would not be possible using standard techniques. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE), and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW).

He is currently Chair of the Dalton Transactions Editorial Board. He is the recipient of several awards including the Royal Society Brian Mercer Award for Innovation, The Baron Axel Cronstedt Prize from the European Federation of Zeolite Associations (2017) and the 新月直播app下载 Tilden Prize (2019).

In 2022, the Dalton Community was formed as a result of the transition of RSC Divisions to Subject Communities. Prior to this point it was known as the Dalton Division, which was formed in 1972 at the time of amalgamation between the Chemical Society and the Royal Institute of Chemistry, together with the Faraday Society and the Society for Analytical Chemistry.

As the Faraday Society became the Faraday Division, and now the Faraday Community for Physical Chemistry, so a new inorganic chemistry division was named the Dalton Division (now Dalton Community) for John Dalton, a prominent historical chemist, famous for his development of the modern theory of the atom.

A Perkin Division was simultaneously formed for organic chemistry, and has since become the RSC Organic Chemistry Community.

The list of past Dalton Presidents contains names of many of the most celebrated British inorganic chemists of the last 40 years.

Dalton Division Past Presidents

Name	President Term
Professor Robert Mulvey	2019 to 2022
Professor Emma Raven	2016 to 2019
Professor David J Cole-Hamilton	2013 to 2016
Professor Peter A Tasker	2010 to 2013
Professor Robin N Perutz	2007 to 2010
Professor Peter G Edwards	2004 to 2007
Professor C David Garner	2001 to 2004
Professor J A McCleverty	1999 to 2001
Professor B F G Johnson	1997 to 1999
Professor K Wade	1995 to 1997
Professor J J Turner	1993 to 1995
Professor R J P Williams	1991 to 1993
Professor M F Lappert	1989 to 1991
Professor P M Maitlis	1985 to 1987
Professor D C Bradley	1983 to 1985
Professor F G A Stone	1981 to 1983
Professor N N Greenwood	1979 to 1981
Professor E A V Ebsworth	1976 to 1979
Professor J S Anderson	1974 to 1976
Professor J Chatt	1972 to 1974