2024 Interdisciplinary Prize Winner
Professor Tim Bugg, University of Warwick
Awarded for the discovery of bacterial enzymes for the degradation of lignin, and their application to the conversion of lignin to renewable chemicals.
To combat global warming, we must reduce our dependence on crude oil, which many of our plastics, materials, and industrial chemicals are made from. The 'biorefinery' concept – making fuels and chemicals from renewable plant biomass – is gaining global traction.
Professor Bugg's research group is working on one of the unsolved problems of the biorefinery: how to convert the aromatic polymer lignin into useful chemicals. Lignin is very hard to break down, but the group has discovered several new bacterial enzymes that can break down lignin and studied how these enzymes work at the molecular level. They have also engineered bacterial lignin-degrading bacteria such as soil microbe Rhodococcus jostii RHA1 to produce useful chemicals like vanillin (used in the food industry) and precursors to new bio-based plastics.
This research, along with the work of other research groups around the world, has established the feasibility of converting lignin using low-energy biochemical transformations into feedstock and high-value chemicals.
2024 Interdisciplinary Prize Winner
Professor Judith Driscoll, University of Cambridge
Awarded for interdisciplinary work to realise unprecedented properties in a broad variety of functional oxide devices.
Professor Driscoll’s research investigates oxide thin film materials for new forms of computing and clean energy generation. These materials could hold the key to new forms of low-power brain-like computing or for achieving a clean energy source, a process that uses powerful superconducting magnets. These films may even be the key to splitting water into green hydrogen.
Oxide thin film materials have a wide range of properties and are also remarkably stable and non-toxic. However, unlocking their full potential requires precise engineering at the atomic level and a range of disciplines from chemistry to physics to engineering.
2024 Interdisciplinary Prize Winner
Professor Sébastien Perrier, University of Warwick
Awarded for interdisciplinary research in the synthesis and applications of therapeutic materials.
Professor Perrier's work sits at the crossroads of chemistry, materials science, and biology, and aims to address pressing global health challenges. His research focuses on developing innovative materials made from polymers for various medical applications, including combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – a major threat to modern medicine – and advanced delivery systems for therapeutics, ranging from small molecules to RNA (Ribonucleic Acid).
Sébastien’s pioneering work explores how cells interact with these materials at the nanoscale. His research holds promise for breakthroughs in drug delivery systems, brain-targeted therapies, and antibacterial agents, hinting at a future where nanotechnology plays a vital role in healthcare. Sébastien's interdisciplinary approach extends beyond scientific achievements to training future generations of researchers. His diverse team includes chemists, biologists, engineers, and more and they work in a collaborative environment where everyone contributes to the team’s research.
| Year | Name | Institution | Citation |
| 2023 | Professor Serena Cussen FRSC | University of Sheffield | Awarded for interdisciplinary and original contributions to the development of new functional materials for energy storage and in-depth study of their local structure and dynamics. |
| 2023 | Professor Nora de Leeuw CChem FRSC | University of Leeds | Awarded for the development and application of computational chemistry to enable atomic-level insights into biomedical materials for in vivo and nature-inspired catalytic systems. |
| 2023 | Professor Nicholas Long CChem FRSC | Imperial College London | Awarded for innovative synthetic chemistry applied to the fields of functional materials and biomedical imaging. |
| 2022 | Professor Michael George CChem FRSC | The University of Nottingham | Awarded for pioneering innovations in flow chemistry, reactor engineering and reaction monitoring for continuous chemical processing. |
| 2022 | Professor Jason Micklefield FRSC | The University of Manchester | Awarded for innovative research spanning organic chemistry to molecular genetics, leading to the discovery, characterisation, and engineering of many novel enzymes. |
| 2022 | Professor Nguyen T. K. Thanh FRSC | University College London | Awarded for outstanding contributions to interdisciplinary research on fundamental understanding of chemical syntheses, physical studies of plasmonic and magnetic nanomaterials for biomedical applications. |
| 2021 | Professor Andrew Cooper | University of Liverpool | Awarded for combining autonomous robotics, artificial intelligence and chemistry to discover materials with new properties. |
| 2021 | Professor Eleanor Schofield | Mary Rose Trust | Awarded for contributions to understanding degradation processes in archaeological materials, cultural heritage science and conservation. |
| 2020 | Professor Chris Abell | University of Cambridge | Awarded for pioneering work on fragment-based drug discovery and microfluidic microdroplets. |
| 2020 | Professor Iain McCulloch | Imperial College London and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology | Awarded for advances in the design, synthesis and innovative application of functional materials in optics, electronics, and energy. |
| 2020 | Professor Emma Raven | University of Bristol | Awarded for seminal contributions to understanding the roles of heme in biology. |
| 2019 | Professor Mark Bradley | University of Edinburgh | Awarded for highly influential and pioneering work in the area of optical medical imaging. |
| 2019 | Professor Christopher Schofield | University of Oxford | Awarded for pioneering work on the mechanisms of activity and resistance to antibiotics. |
| 2019 | Professor Nigel Scrutton | The University of Manchester | Awarded for outstanding contributions to enzyme and photoreceptor biophysics and catalysis. |
| 2018 | Professor Leroy Cronin | University of Glasgow | Awarded for work exploring complex chemical systems and digitising chemistry using artificial intelligence. |
| 2018 | Dr Judy Hirst | University of Cambridge | Awarded for combining structural, biochemical and physical chemical techniques to pioneer studies of energy conversion in complex redox enzymes. |
| 2018 | Professor Barrie Wilkinson | John Innes Centre | Awarded for combining molecular biology, enzymology and chemistry in the engineering of biosynthetic pathways to microbial metabolites. |
| 2017 | Professor Greg Challis | University of Warwick | Awarded for outstanding contributions to the discovery and mechanistic illumination of novel natural product biosynthetic enzymes. |
| 2017 | Professor Melinda Duer | University of Cambridge | Awarded for solid-state NMR spectroscopy and computational methods applied to the elucidation of structure and molecular interactions in calcified tissues. |
| 2017 |
Professor Fiona Meldrum | University of Leeds | Awarded for contributions to understanding biomineralization processes and exploiting bio-inspired strategies to control the structure and properties of crystalline materials. |
| 2016 |
Professor Jörg Feldmann | University of Aberdeen | Awarded for the development of analytical systems to unravel biological metal metabolites. |
| 2016 |
Professor Peter Hore | University of Oxford | Awarded for his outstanding contributions to understanding biological structure and function using the phenomenon of spin. |
| 2016 |
Professor Dek Woolfson | University of Bristol | Awarded for his contributions to understanding sequence-to-structure relationships in natural proteins, and using these to design entirely new protein folds and assemblies. |
| 2015 |
Professor Elaine Holmes | Imperial College London | Awarded for outstanding contributions to metabolic phenotyping and systems biology leading to novel biomarkers and mechanistic insights into toxicity and disease. |
| 2015 |
Professor Sarah (Sally) Price | University College London | Awarded for transforming our understanding of the subtle differences in the crystalline organic solid state energy landscape and discovering new physical forms of organic molecules. |
| 2015 |
Professor Anthony Watts | University of Oxford | Awarded for pioneering new solid state NMR techniques that have revealed the functional significance of conformational dynamics in biomembrane complexes of ligands and small molecules. |
| 2014 |
Professor Steven Armes | The University of Sheffield | Awarded for his significant contribution to our current understanding of micrometeorites and the behaviour of cosmic dust particles. |
| 2014 |
Professor Sabine Flitsch | University of Manchester | Awarded for her significant contributions in biological chemistry, in particular in carbohydrate chemistry and glycobiology. |
| 2014 |
Professor Richard Pancost | University of Bristol | Awarded for the use of analytical chemistry in the identification and stable isotope characterisation of lipid biomarkers to questions related to global environmental change. |
| 2013 |
Professor James Barber | Imperial College London | Awarded for his elucidation of the mechanism of water oxidation in higher plants, and his application of natural photosynthetic principles to the development of artificial photosynthetic systems, open up new avenues in solar energy research. |
| 2013 |
Professor Jane Clarke | University of Cambridge | Awarded for her pioneering work in the application of atomic force microscopy (AMF) to study folding in families of proteins. |
| 2012 |
Professor Hagan Bayley | University of Oxford | Awarded for his seminal studies of engineered protein pores offering insight into the basis of pore assembly and function, and enabling diverse applications, including single-molecule sensing and the construction of artificial tissues. |
| 2011 |
Carol Robinson | University of Oxford | Award for her development of a new area of research, gas-phase structural biology, using highly refined mass spectrometry techniques. |
| 2010 |
Alexei Kornyshev | Imperial College London | Awarded for his many outstanding contributions at the interfaces of chemistry with both physics and with biology. |
| 2010 |
Barry Potter | University of Bath | Awarded for his innovative application of techniques in synthetic organic chemistry to challenges in biology and medicine. His broad ranging studies have addressed both fundamental and applied challenges. |
| 2009 |
Tom Brown | University of Southampton | Awarded for his many innovative contributions to nucleic acid chemistry and its application to problems at the chemistry biology interface. |
| 2009 |
Bonnie Ann Wallace | Birkbeck College, University of London | Awarded for her work in developing applications of synchrotron radiation circular dichroism spectroscopy as a tool in chemistry, structural genomics, biochemistry and chemical biology. |
| 2008 |
Not awarded this year | ||
| 2007 |
Professor David Klenerman | University of Cambridge | Awarded for original applications in the life sciences of new biophysical methods based on laser fluorescence spectroscopy and scanning probe microscopy. |
| 2007 |
Professor Jeremy Nicholson | Imperial College London | Awarded for his contributions to chemical biology, particularly mechanistic insights into disease and toxicity through the development of the field of metabonomics. |
| 2006 |
Professor J W Goodby | University of York | Awarded for his contributions to the understanding of ferroelectricity in liquid crystals, alignment mechanisms in devices and deducing novel structures, especially in frustrated phases. |
| 2006 |
Professor D Lilley | University of Dundee | Awarded for his chemical and mechanistic insight in solving problems in chemical biology, particularly his work on RNA folding and resulting catalytic activity. |
| 2005 |
Professor Fraser A Armstrong | University of Oxford | Awarded for pioneering interdisciplinary research that has led to the resolution of some of the complicated catalytic reactions and active-site transformations of hydrogenases - enzymes of great importance for hydrogen energy technology. |
| 2005 |
Professor Steven M Howdle | University of Nottingham | Awarded for his contributions to the development of polymers and bioactive materials using supercritical fluids. |
| 2005 |
Mr Raymond White | National Gallery, London | Awarded for groundbreaking contributions to the chemical investigation of natural products used in artworks and cultural heritage objects in support of restoration practices and the reconstruction of past technologies. |
| 2004 |
Professor Douglas B Kell | University of Manchester | Awarded for his contributions to bioanalytical science and the application of molecular and numerical approaches to the study of biological systems. |
| 2004 |
Professor David A Leigh | University of Edinburgh | Awarded for his work on the development of synthetic molecular motors and machines. |
| 2003 |
Professor Richard P Evershed | University of Bristol | Awarded for his international recognition as an analytical organic geochemist and the leading exponent of biomolecular archaeology who has revolutionized aspects of archaeological science. |
| 2003 |
Professor David W Young | University of Sussex | Awarded for his brilliant contributions to the organic chemistry of enzymes of importance in biology and medicine over many years. |
| 2002 |
P J Bruce | ||
| 2002 |
S Neidle | ||
| 2001 |
Steve K Chapman | University of Edinburgh | Awarded for research into the structure, function and mechanism of action of flavocytochromes, particularly flavocytochrome b2 and cytochrome P450. |
| 2001 |
W Jim Feast | Durham University | Awarded for the development of polymer chemistry to enable processible semiconducting polymers which can be exploited in a wide range of semiconductor device applications. |
| 2000 |
Martyn Poliakoff | University of Nottingham | Awarded for research into the applications of supercritical fluids in chemistry. |
| 2000 |
Andrew J Thomson | University of East Anglia | Awarded for the application of magnetic and optical spectroscopic methods to elucidate the functional roles of transition metals in biology. |
| 1999 |
Professor Chris M Dobson | University of Oxford | Awarded for research at the interface of chemistry with biology and medicine. |
| 1999 |
Professor Stephen Mann | University of Bristol | Awarded for research into the interface between biomineralisation and materials chemistry. |
| 1999 |
Professor Christopher Viney | Heriot-Watt University | Awarded for research into biomolecular materials, polymers and liquid crystals. |
| 1998 |
C Richard A Catlow | The Royal Institution | Awarded for synthetic, structural and computational studies including many of industrial importance. |
| 1998 |
Chris T Evans | Merlin Ventures | Awarded for the development of biotechnology for the production of usefulmaterials and essential services. |
| 1997 |
Ruth Duncan | School of Pharmacy, London | Awarded for research and development of Polymeric Anticancer Agent - from Laboratory to Clinic. |
| 1997 |
Peter J Sarre | University of Nottingham | Awarded for contributions to astrophysical chemistry. |
| 1996 |
Peter Gregory | Zeneca Specialists | Awarded for contributions to the area of high technology applications of organic colourants. |
| 1995 |
David Parker | Durham University | Awarded for contributions in the area of tailored complexes and conjugates for imaging and therapy. |
| 1994 |
James R Maxwell | University of Bristol | Awarded for the use of chemistry in exploring geology. |
| 1993 |
J John Holbrook | University of Bristol | Awarded for the redesign of enzymes for the synthesis of homochiral molecules. |
| 1992 |
Martin R Bryce | Durham University | Awarded for research into the synthesis of organic materials with unusual solid state properties. |
| 1992 |
Dennis Chapman | Royal Free Hospital, School of Medicine | Awarded for research into biomembranes and biomaterials. |
| 1991 |
Richard H Friend | University of Cambridge | Awarded for research into the electronic properties of organic polymers and related materials. |
| 1991 |
Malcolm F G Stevens | Aston University | Awarded for research and development of anticancer drugs - from the laboratory bench to the clinic. |
| 1990 |
John A Pyle | University of Cambridge | Awarded for research into atmospheric chemistry. |
| 1989 |
Laurie J King | University of Surrey | Awarded for research into toxicology. |
| 1988 |
Brian J Briscoe | Imperial College London | Awardedfor contributions to interface science and engineering, material science and environmental sensors |
| 1987 |
Laurie D Hall | University of Cambridge | Awarded for research and development of NMR as a structural tool for carbohydrate chemistry. |
| 1987 |
John E Harris | National Power | Awarded for research into corrosion. |
| 1986 |
H Allen O Hill | University of Oxford | Awarded for research into bioinorganic chemistry, electrochemistry and enzyme reactions. |
| 1986 |
Michael Jarman | Institute of Cancer Research | Awarded for research into drug metabolism. |
Re-thinking recognition: Science prizes for the modern world
This report is the result of an independent review of our recognition programmes. Our aim in commissioning this review was to ensure that our recognition portfolio continues to deliver the maximum impact for chemical scientists, chemistry and society.