Queer in Chem

Today, Communications Chemistry launches a series of Q&A articles conducted with queer chemists. Here, we discuss the motivation for and aim of this series, and present some key take-home messages from our respondents.

Polly Arnold is a Professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US. Polly’s research focuses on exploratory synthetic chemistry. Such knowledge underpins the discovery of catalysts and our understanding of the behavior of nuclear waste.

Dr Camille Bishop is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Wayne State University. She obtained her PhD in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, where she prepared glasses with liquid crystal-like packing using physical vapor deposition, after obtaining her B.S. in chemistry from the University of Chicago.

Dr Jovan Dragelj completed his undergraduate and Master’s studies in chemistry in Belgrade, Serbia, after which he worked as a chemistry teacher and researcher at the University of Belgrade. In 2019, he earned his PhD in computational chemistry from Freie Universität Berlin and then pursued postdoctoral studies at Technische Universität Berlin. His research during this period spanned diverse areas, from non-covalent interactions to biocatalysis, with a major focus on studying cytochrome c oxidase and hydrogenase enzymes through multiscale modeling approaches.

Abhik Ghosh grew up in Kolkata, India, and is a Professor of inorganic and materials chemistry at UiT—The Arctic University of Norway. His research interests lie at the intersection of inorganic, materials and computational chemistry.

Andrew Goodwin is Professor of Materials Chemistry and a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the dual aspects of flexibility and disorder in functional materials, and his group of about 10–15 researchers is based in Oxford’s Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory.

Dr Josh Makepeace is an Associate Professor in Materials Chemistry and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Raised in Australia, Josh started his journey in chemistry research at Flinders University of South Australia, investigating the origin of hematite crystals in William Bligh’s naval logbooks, and the detection of pesticides in waterways.

Anna G. Slater is a Professor of Chemistry and Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool’s Materials Innovation Factory and Chemistry Department. Exploiting continuous flow processes for enhanced control of chemistry is a central theme of her work, which spans molecular materials, supramolecular chemistry, and sustainable synthesis.

Nancy Scott Burke Williams is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Keck Science Department of Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges in Claremont, California, where she has been in the faculty since 2003. She was born in Puyallup, WA to Burke and Nancy Williams, from whom she takes most of her names.