Professor Nicholas Long - 2023 Interdisciplinary Prize winner

Professor Nicholas Long CChem FRSC

Winner: 2023 Interdisciplinary Prize

Imperial College London

For innovative synthetic chemistry applied to the fields of functional materials and biomedical imaging.

Celebrate Professor Nicholas Long

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I want to make a difference. That may be via mentorship and inspiration to the undergraduates, postgraduates and research fellows that I teach and supervise, or via my research findings having an impact on academia, industry, or society and the general public.

Central to Professor Long’s research is the design and synthesis of new chemical bonds or combinations of elements. The thrill of making new molecules and establishing their potential application is what motivates Nick and his research group. For example, a new molecule could be used as an industrial catalyst, a conducting or switchable material, or as a biomedical imaging probe. In this latter area, his group are developing less toxic MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) contrast agents, as well as fluorescent and radiochemical probes that can provide better and earlier disease diagnosis. They are also working on metal-containing nanomaterials that target cancerous tumours. Their solar cell work is aimed at producing cheap, stable and flexible solar devices, with excellent efficiencies.

Read winner biography

Professor Nick Long holds the Sir Edward Frankland BP Endowed Chair in Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London. He has wide-ranging research experience in applied synthetic inorganic and organometallic chemistry.

Nick’s research interests focus on transition metal and lanthanide chemistry for the synthesis of functional materials, homogeneous catalysts and, in recent years, probe design and novel methodologies for biomedical imaging. He has published over 250 papers, including several high impact review articles and textbooks (Metallocenes and The Chemistry of Molecular Imaging). He holds several patents and has successfully graduated 57 PhD students from his research group.

His awards include the 2006 RSC Prize in Organometallic Chemistry and the 2020 RSC Frankland Award. In 2018, Nick was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit grant (2018–2022) and was elected as a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences in 2021. He is Deputy Director of the EPSRC King’s/Imperial Centre for Doctoral Training in Smart Medical Imaging.

Q&A

What motivates you?

Can you tell us about a scientific development on the horizon that you are excited about?

The development of personalised medicine or healthcare. This has long been discussed but I think within the next 10–15 years, through a combination of chemistry, biology, imaging sciences and medicine, we will be able to discover how each one of our bodies works and what we need to stay healthy and live better lives.

What is your favourite element?

This always changes depending on the latest result! But considering the research associated with this prize it has to be iron. I have long been fascinated by the chemistry of ferrocene, with iron as the central metal bound by slices of cyclopentadienyls: it is the 70-year-old sandwich that just keeps giving.