Chemical Society Reviews Blog

We are pleased to welcome nominations for the 2018 Pioneering Investigator Lectureship for Chem Soc Rev.

All nominations must be received by Monday, 19 February 2018.

The Pioneering Investigator Lectureship replaces our previous Emerging Investigator Lectureship, and aims to recognise mid-career scientists who have firmly established themselves in their independent careers. Early career researchers can be nominated for the ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship.

Chem Soc Rev Pioneering Investigator Lectureship

• Recognises mid-career scientists who have firmly established themselves in their independent careers, continuously publish innovative work, and have pioneered several research areas.

• Eligible nominees should have completed their PhD between 15^th September 2002 and 14^th September 2009.

Lectureship details

• The recipient of the lectureship will be invited to present a lecture at three different locations over a 12-month period, with at least one of these events taking place at an international conference.

• The recipient will receive a contribution of £1500 towards travel and accommodation costs for their lectures, as well as a certificate.

• The recipient will be asked to contribute a review article for the journal.

How to nominate

Self-nomination is not permitted. Nominators must send the following to the editorial team via chemsocrev-rsc@rsc.org by Monday, 19 February 2018.

• Recommendation letter, including the name, contact details and website URL of the nominee.

• A one-page CV for the nominee, including a summary of their education, dates of key career achievements, a list of up to five of their top independent publications, total numbers of publications and patents, and other indicators of esteem, together with evidence of career independence.

• A copy of the candidate’s best publication to date (as judged by the nominator).

• Two supporting letters of recommendation from two independent referees. These should not be someone from the same institution or the candidate’s post doc or PhD supervisor.

The nominator and independent referees should comment on the candidate’s presenting skills.

Incomplete nominations or those not adhering to the above requirements will not be considered, and nominees will not be contacted regarding any missing or incorrect documents.

Selection procedure

• The editorial team will screen each nomination for eligibility and draw up a shortlist of candidates based on the nomination documents provided.

• Shortlisted candidates will be asked to provide a brief supporting statement summarising their key achievements, highlighting the impact of their work and justifying why they deserve the specific lectureship for which they have been entered.

• The recipient of the lectureship will then be selected and endorsed by a selection panel composed of members of the ChemSocRev Editorial Board. The winner will be announced in the first half of 2018.

NB: Please note that members of the selection panel from the Chem Soc Rev Editorial Board are not eligible to nominate, or provide references, for this lectureship.

For any queries, please contact the editorial team at chemsocrev-rsc@rsc.org.

On behalf of the Chem Soc Rev Editorial Board, we are pleased to announce the winner of the 2017 Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator Lectureship – Rafal Klajn from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Our warmest congratulations to Rafal!

Rafal was born in Poland, where he completed his undergraduate studies. He was awarded his PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2009 at Northwestern University, where he worked with Professors Bartosz A Grzybowski and Sir J Fraser Stoddart on fabricating new hybrid materials incorporating inorganic nanoparticles and molecular switches. For his doctoral research, he was awarded the 2008 International Precious Metals Institute Student Award, the 2010 IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists, and the 2013 Victor K. LaMer Award from the American Chemical Society.

Rafal Klajn

He began his independent research career in November 2009 at the Department of Organic Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, as a tenure-track Assistant Professor directly after obtaining his PhD degree. Since then, his group has worked on nanoscale reactivity and self-assembly – incorporating photo-responsive moieties into nanoporous solids, working with superparamagnetic nanoparticles of various shapes and demonstrating that cubic nanoparticles of iron oxide could spontaneously assemble into helical materials, and developing the concept of “dynamically self-assembling nanoflasks” capable of accelerating chemical reactions using light, working with flexible metal-organic (coordination) cages that can encapsulate diverse organic molecules ranging from fluorescent dyes to nonpolar pharmaceuticals, among other projects.

He is currently an Associate Professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and now focuses on creating synthetic out-of-equilibrium systems and “life-like” materials, not only to develop innovative functional materials, but also to tackle what he deems as one of the most important and fascinating problems – the origin of life.

As part of the Lectureship, Rafal will present a lecture at three locations over the coming year, with at least one of these events taking place at an international conference, where he will be formally presented with his Emerging Investigator Lectureship certificate. Details of his lectures will be announced in due course – keep an eye on the blog for details.

Read these Open Access articles by Rafal Klajn:

Spiropyran-based dynamic materials
Rafal Klajn
Chem. Soc. Rev., 2014, 43, 148-184
DOI: 10.1039/C3CS60181A, Review Article,  Open Access

Dual-responsive nanoparticles that aggregate under the simultaneous action of light and CO₂
Ji-Woong Lee and Rafal Klajn
Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 2036-2039
DOI: 10.1039/C4CC08541H, Communication,  Open Access

Magnetic field-induced self-assembly of iron oxide nanocubes
Gurvinder Singh, Henry Chan, T. Udayabhaskararao, Elijah Gelman, Davide Peddis, Artem Baskin, Gregory Leitus, Petr Král and Rafal Klajn
Faraday Discuss., 2015, 181, 403-421
DOI: 10.1039/C4FD00265B, Paper,  Open Access
From themed collection Nanoparticle Synthesis and Assembly

Controlling the lifetimes of dynamic nanoparticle aggregates by spiropyran functionalization
Pintu K. Kundu, Sanjib Das, Johannes Ahrens and Rafal Klajn
Nanoscale, 2016,8, 19280-19286
DOI: 10.1039/C6NR05959G, Paper,  Open Access

The Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator Lectureship is an annual lectureship which recognises emerging scientists who have made a significant contribution to their research field.  Nominations for the 2018 Lectureship will open later in the year – keep an eye on the blog for details, and read more about our previous winners.

2016:     Gonçalo Bernardes from the University of Cambridge, UK

      Guihua Yu from the University of Texas at Austin, USA

2015:     Aron Walsh from the University of Bath, UK

2014:     Peng Chen from Peking University, Beijing, China

2013:     Xile Hu from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland

2012:     Xiaogang Liu from the National University of Singapore and Institute of Materials Research Engineering, A*STAR, Singapore

2011:     Cristina Nevado from the University of Zurich, Switzerland

2010:     Shu-Hong Yu from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

2009:     Matt Gaunt from the University of Cambridge, UK

2008:     Kazuya Kikuchi from Osaka University, Japan

Read our excellent 2016 Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigators themed issue and watch out for our upcoming Emerging Investigators issue next year.

Dr Gonçalo Bernardes (University of Cambridge, UK), one of the winners of the 2016 Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator Lectureship, is currently on his Lectureship tour.

He graduated from the University of Lisbon in 2004 and completed his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford, UK in 2008 under the supervision of Professor Ben Davis working on reaction engineering for site-selective protein modification. He then undertook postdoctoral work at the Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany under the guidance of Prof Peter Seeberger. He currently leads a research group at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge where he holds a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship.

He was also formally awarded his Lectureship certificate by Richard Kelly, Executive Editor (Royal Society of Chemistry).

Photograph: © Fabien Venturi
Richard Kelly (left) awards the Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator
Lectureship 2016 to Dr Gonçalo Bernardes (right)

Did you know? Gonçalo kept a trip diary of his SAFEA-RSC Visiting Researcher Programme China, where he gave the first talk of his Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigators Lectureship tour earlier this year.

Read more about his trip diary in China on MyRSC, the online chemistry community.

On behalf of the Chem Soc Rev Editorial Board, it is with great pleasure that we announce the winners of the 2016 Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator Lectureship: Gonçalo Bernardes (chemical biology), University of Cambridge, UK, and Guihua Yu (energy nanomaterials), University of Texas at Austin, USA. Our warmest congratulations to Gonçalo and Guihua!

Gonçalo Bernardes

Gonçalo graduated from the University of Lisbon in 2004 and completed his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford, UK in 2008 under the supervision of Professor Ben Davis working on reaction engineering for site-selective protein modification. He then undertook postdoctoral work at the Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany under the guidance of Prof Peter Seeberger. He currently leads a research group at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, UK where he holds a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship. He also the Director of the Chemical Biology and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Unit at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. His research interests lie in the field of chemical biology, particularly in developing novel aqueous reactions for site-specific protein modification with the aim of using them to understand key biological processes and apply them to the construction of targeted therapeutics.

Guihua Yu

Guihua Yu is currently an Assistant Professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Harvard University (with Professor Charles M. Lieber) in 2009, after graduating from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in chemistry (summa cum laude) in 2003. Guihua did his postdoctoral research at Stanford University (2009-2012) with Professors Zhenan Bao, Yi Cui, and Eric Shaqfeh. His research focuses on rational design and synthesis of functional nanoscale materials, a fundamental understanding of their chemical and physical properties, and development of large-scale assembly and integration strategies to enable their technologically important applications in energy, electronics, environment and life sciences.

As part of the Lectureship, Gonçalo and Guihua will each present a lecture at three different locations over the coming year, with at least one of these events taking place at an international conference, where they will be formally presented with their Emerging Investigator Lectureship certificate. Details of their lectures will be announced in due course – keep an eye on the blog for details.

The Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator Lectureship is an annual lectureship which recognises emerging scientists who have made a significant contribution to their research field.  For information on previous winners, see our past blog entries.

Read these recent articles by Gonçalo Bernardes and by Guihua Yu:

Natural product modulators of transient receptor potential (TRP) channels as potential anti-cancer agents
Tiago Rodrigues, Florian Sieglitz and Gonçalo J. L. Bernardes
Chem. Soc. Rev., 2016, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5CS00916B, Tutorial Review
From themed collection 2016 Emerging Investigators

Construction of homogeneous antibody–drug conjugates using site-selective protein chemistry
Padma Akkapeddi, Saara-Anne Azizi, Allyson M. Freedy, Pedro M. S. D. Cal, Pedro M. P. Gois and Gonçalo J. L. Bernardes
Chem. Sci., 2016, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C6SC00170J, Minireview

A chemistry and material perspective on lithium redox flow batteries towards high-density electrical energy storage
Yu Zhao, Yu Ding, Yutao Li, Lele Peng, Hye Ryung Byon, John B. Goodenough and Guihua Yu
Chem. Soc. Rev., 2015,44, 7968-7996
DOI: 10.1039/C5CS00289C, Review Article

Nanostructured conductive polymers for advanced energy storage
Ye Shi, Lele Peng, Yu Ding, Yu Zhao and Guihua Yu
Chem. Soc. Rev., 2015,44, 6684-6696
DOI: 10.1039/C5CS00362H, Tutorial Review

Watch out for our upcoming issue later this year: Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigators Issue 2016 – check out the online collection, new articles will be added as they are published

On behalf of the Chem Soc Rev Editorial Board, we are delighted to announce Professor Aron Walsh from the University of Bath as the winner of the 2015 Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator Lectureship.

Aron graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 2003 and is currently Professor of Materials Theory at Bath’s Department of Chemistry. His group’s research involves the development and application of multi-scale techniques to model the properties of functional materials. On accepting the award, he commented, “It is an exciting time for computational materials chemistry. I am fortunate to be part of a vibrant community, to have a network of talented collaborators, and a wonderful research group. I will use this Lectureship to showcase our latest advances towards sustainable solar energy solutions.”

As part of his award, Aron will give a sponsored lecture at a selected international meeting, where he will be also be formally presented with his Emerging Investigator certificate. Details of his lecture will be announced in due course.

 The Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator Lectureship is an annual lectureship which is given to recognise an emerging scientist who has made a significant contribution to their research field.  Nominations for the 2016 Lectureship will open later in the year – keep an eye on the blog for the details.