Professor Anna Slater - 2023 Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize winner

Professor Anna Slater MRSC

Winner: 2023 Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize

University of Liverpool

For the development of innovative tools, particularly flow chemistry processes, to control the formation of supramolecular materials.

Celebrate Professor Anna Slater

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I am honoured to be awarded the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize. I am so proud of our team and all their efforts; this is a recognition of their work, especially given the challenges of the last few years ...

New, sustainable materials are needed to address global challenges in energy use, healthcare, and more. But making new chemicals and materials can be challenging: discovery takes time and resources. Even when a new molecule or material is discovered, it can be difficult to make it on a large scale in a sustainable, reproducible way.

Professor Slater’s group develop techniques, such as flow chemistry, to make discovery more efficient and chemistry reaction processes more reliable, sustainable, and scalable. As a result, the time it takes to get materials out of the lab and into wider use is shortened. The groups also works with industry to use these techniques for existing processes, aiming to reduce waste and energy usage, and improve efficiency.

Read winner biography

Anna Slater is Professor of Chemistry and a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool. She received her PhD in supramolecular chemistry from the University of Nottingham in 2011. Following postdoctoral positions in porphyrin self-assembly and porous organic cage materials she took up a Royal Society-EPSRC Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship in 2016, and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2021.

During her postdoctoral positions, Anna developed an interest in continuous synthesis, recognising that flow technology has a lot to offer the supramolecular chemist; exploiting flow processes for enhanced control of chemistry is now a central theme of her work.

Anna is a member of the RSC Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry Interest Group, and vice-chair of Women in Supramolecular Chemistry (WISC).

Q&A

How did you first become interested in chemistry?

I was a pretty indecisive student – when I picked my A-levels, I was torn between chemistry, physics, and maths, or English, philosophy, and music. I think I'd have been happy either way, but for me, Chemistry gives me the opportunity to understand how things work, solve problems, and be creative, as well as working with people with a huge range of perspectives and experiences – it's ended up being a great home for me.

What does good research culture look like/mean to you?

For me, a good research culture starts with listening, respect, openness, and transparency – being curious about other people's points of view, recognising when barriers are preventing people from participating fully as their full selves, and working to remove those barriers.

Why do you think teamwork is important in science?

I think teamwork is absolutely critical in science – we solve more interesting problems together, and end up in completely unexpected and exciting places! For example, I never thought I'd work on non-thermal plasma, but in collaboration with Professor James Walsh, Dr Timothy Easun, and Dr Johnny Higham, Patrycja Roszkowska in our group has built a microfluidic NTP reactor which we are finding gives very promising results for some of the reactions we are studying. Without a chance conversation we'd never be trying this, and without our complementary expertise it would never have worked.

What is your favourite element?

My favourite reaction is a Suzuki coupling, so I'd have to say boron – a bit different, sometimes a bit unpredictable, but can do some really useful things when you get the process right – I might be projecting a bit here! I've used boron as BF₃.OEt₂ to make porphyrins, or to make BODIPY compounds – it crops up in dynamic combinatorial chemistry – I really like what it can do!