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We are delighted to announce that Professor Kevin B. Nolan, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences,  was presented with an Honorary Fellowship of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland (ICI), the national body representing all Chemists in Ireland.
This is the highest honour the Institute can bestow on its members
and is in recognition of his enormous contribution to Chemistry that spans over 4 decades.

Professor Nolan completed his graduate and PhD studies in NUI Galway before moving to the UK where he took up lectureship positions at the University of Stirling, University College London and the University of Surrey. During this time, he also spent a year as Visiting Professor at the University of California San Diego.

Professor Nolan joined RCSI in 1987 as Head of the Department of Chemistry. His influence in this role was instant and transformational, retaining the Department’s reputation for excellence in teaching while building an international reputation in applied biomedical and pharmaceutical research.

From 1997-2002, he held the position of Vice-Dean of the RCSI Medical Faculty with responsibility for research. He played a key role in the establishment of the RCSI School of Pharmacy in 2002 and later in the establishment of the RCSI School of Postgraduate Studies in 2006. He was appointed Inaugural Head of this School in 2006; amongst his outstanding achievements was the launch of a structured PhD programme.

Internationally, Professor Nolan was also appointed as Vice-President of RCSI-UCD Penang Medical University, Malaysia from 2014-2017.

Nationally, he was Chairman of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Ireland Section, 2003-2006. In 2008, he co-founded the Irish Institute for Metal-Based Drugs and was centrally involved in the establishment of the UCD/RCSI/TCD Centre for Synthesis and Chemical Biology in 2001.

He is the author of more than 100 publications and, in 2004, he was awarded a DSc from the National University of Ireland for research in Bio-inorganic Chemistry.

Professor Nolan, throughout his distinguished career, has always been a fervent student advocate. He received numerous awards for excellence in teaching, as voted by students, including the NAIRTL National Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2012.

The Institute of Chemistry of Ireland was delighted to bestow this honour on Professor Nolan during the ICI Annual Award Ceremony, held in UCD on Thursday, 1st May, 2025, in recognition of his unwavering and exceptional commitment to excellence in teaching, research and service, and for his role in advancing the field of chemistry both nationally and internationally.

LECTURER IN BIOINORGANIC CHEMISTRY

School of Chemistry, Future Pharmaceuticals

and the Analytical and Biological Chemistry Research Facility (ABCRF)

College of Science, Engineering & Food Science

Permanent Whole-Time Post

Application Deadline: 12 noon (Irish Local Time) on Tuesday, 11^th February 2025

Further details may be found here:

UCC Lecturership in Bioinorganic Chemistry

https://my.corehr.com/pls/uccrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.jobspec?p_id=083114

The 48th Annual ICI Congress
‘Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Chemistry’

is taking place in the Aurivo Auditorium,
Atlantic Technlogical University (ATU), Sligo

22nd November, 2024 

All welcome to attend

The scientific programme is available here: ATU-2024-ICI Meeting

The ICI Annual Award Ceremony took place in

UCD, O’Brien Centre for Science, SCIH 1.37 Lynch Theatre in Science Hub

on Thursday, 18th April, 2024

Congratulations to all the ICI Awardees who delivered outstanding presentations during the Ceremony. Programme details may be found here: ICI Annual Award Ceremony 2024 Programme

Pictured here is Professor Pat Guiry, ICI President, presenting Ellen Fay, School of Chemistry, Trinity College Dublin with her ICI Postgraduate Award 2024.
Her Award Lecture was entitled
‘Nucleoside and Oligonucleotide Modification for Targeting DNA Damage Repair’

Pictured here is Professor Pat Guiry, ICI President, presenting Professor Tia Keyes, School of Chemical Sciences, Dublin City University with her  ICI Boyle Higgins Gold Medal and Lecture Award 2024.
Her Award Lecture was entitled
‘Probes and Platforms for Biophysics; A Chemist’s Solution to Biological Problems’

Pictured here is Professor Pat Guiry, ICI President, presenting Professor Stuart James, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Queen’s University Belfast with his ICI Eva Philbin Award 2024. His Award Lecture was entitled
‘Mechanochemistry and Porous Liquids: New thinking for Sustainable Processes’

P

Pictured here are Professor Frank Hegarty (UCD), Professor Pat Guiry (UCD), Professor Tia Keyes (DCU) and Professor John Kelly (TCD), all ICI Boyle Higgins’ Gold Medal and Lecture Awardees!

Pictured here (from l to r) are
Professor Pat Guiry (ICI President), Margaret Franklin (Past ICI President 2015-2017),
Professor Celine Marmion (Immediate Past President 2019-2022) and
Patrick Hobbs (Past President 2013-2015)

Please find below the details for the upcoming  ICI Award Ceremony to be held on 18th April, 2024  commencing at 15.00 in UCD. This is an in-person event and all are welcome to attend.

ICI Award Ceremony

Venue: UCD, O’Brien Centre for Science, SCIH 1.37 Lynch Theatre in Science Hub

Programme:

3.00-3.20 Ellen Fay – ICI Postgraduate Award – “Nucleoside and Oligonucleotide Modification for Targeting DNA Damage Repair”

3.20-4.00 Susan Quinn (Eva Philbin Award Lecture 2023) – “Adventures in DNA: Exploring New Avenues for Light Activated Diagnostics and Therapeutics”

4-4.40 Stuart James (Eva Philbin Award Lecture 2024) – “Mechanochemistry and Porous Liquids: New thinking for Sustainable Processes”

4.40-5.20 Tia Keyes (Boyle-Higgins Medal 2024) – “Probes and Platforms for Biophysics; A chemist’s solution to Biological problems”

5.30-6pm Wine Reception

The Institute of Chemistry of Ireland (ICI) is delighted to provide 20 student bursaries (ECC-9 student registration fee) to students attending the 9th EuChemS Congress (ECC-9) which is taking place in Dublin, Ireland, 7-11th July, 2024.

Bursary applicants must:

• be an undergraduate student or postgraduate scholar registered in an Irish higher education institution
• be members of the ICI
• have an ECC-9 abstract accepted

To apply for an ICI student bursary, please complete the application form here.

Please note the following key dates:

Deadline for ICI bursary applications: 17^th March, 2024 (St. Patrick’s Day)

Please click here for further details in relation to the Congress and ECC-9 abstract submission process.

If you wish to become a graduate member of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland, further details may be found here

The 47th ICI Congress on
‘Achieving Sustainability Through Chemistry’
will be hosted by Queen’s University Belfast
on 24th October, 2023

Click ICI Congress 2023 for
programme and registration details

The ICI is delighted to be hosting ECC-9 which will take place in the Convention Centre in Dublin, Ireland from the 7th-11th July, 2024 inclusive.
Further details may be found here:
https://euchems2024.org

EFMC International Symposium on Chemical Biology 

The European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology (EFMC) and the Swiss Chemical Society, Division for Medicinal Chemistry & Chemical Biology (DMCCB) will be organising the International Symposium on Chemical Biology (EFMC-ISCB) on November 16-18, 2023 in Basel, Switzerland.

VIII SEQT Summer School (Santiago de Compostela, Spain) 

The 8th SEQT Summer School – Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology in Drug Discovery: The Pharma Perspective is an EFMC Certified School organised by the Spanish Society of Medicinal Chemistry (SEQT) and GalChimia with the aim of approaching the pharma industry to young researchers, both graduate students and post-doctoral associates, working in the chemistry and health sciences related fields. The summer school will take place in JUNE 19-21, 2023 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

The ICI Annual Award Ceremony and 73rd AGM are taking place in RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences on Wednesday, 8th June, 2022 commencing at 16.00 in the Albert Lecture Theatre.

The ICI Award Ceremony Programme may be found here: ICI Annual Award Ceremony 2022 Programme

The Institute of Chemistry of Ireland
is delighted to announce the call for nominations for the following prestigious ICI award:

The ICI Postgraduate Award 2022

Deadline for receipt of nominations: Friday, 29th April, 2022

The nominee must be a registered PhD student in any Chemistry discipline working in an Irish Higher Education Institution. They must have demonstrated excellence in research through publications. They must also have demonstrated a commitment to supporting and promoting Chemistry within their Institution (e.g. through active participation in public engagement initiatives). A person nominated for this award must be a member of the Institute at the time of nomination or upon receipt of the award.

Nomination Process: The nominator, who must be the student’s PhD supervisor, shall send one electronic copy of their nomination by email to the President of the Institute, which will include a cover letter providing a brief resume of the reasons for the nomination, together with a CV (maximum 2 pages) of the nominee.

Nominations to be addressed to the ICI President, Professor Celine Marmion and sent to: cmarmion@rcsi.ie

With our thanks to the ICI YCN for hosting a wonderful event in celebration of International Women’s Day on the 9th March, 2022.  This involved a panel discussion with Dr Michelle Brown (Research Fellow, CRANN, TCD and L’Oreal UNESCO FWIS Fellow 2021), Dr Clare S. Mahon (Assistant Professor at Durham University), Dr Roisin O’Flaherty (Assistant Professor at Maynooth University) and recruiters from the Berkey Group. This was a free event open to all.

The International Carbohydrate Organization invites applications for the ICO Young Researcher Award 2022. This award was established in 2012 to encourage carbohydrate research by young investigators and shall be given to a researcher working on a project focused on any aspect of glycochemistry and/or glycobiology. The recipient of this award will be invited to present their work orally at the 30th International Carbohydrate Virtual Symposium in Brazil, from July 10th to 15th, 2022. The award covers registration expenses and a cash prize of 1000 USD. Further details in relation to eligibility and application details may be found here:  ICO Young Researcher Award_2022

Application deadline: Tuesday, 1st March, 2022

We are delighted to let you know that Professor Tadhg Begley, an Irish chemist, UCC alumnus, Distinguished Professor, Derek Barton Professor of Chemistry and Robert A. Welch Foundation Chair, at Texas A&M University in the US, is the recipient of the ICI Boyle Higgins’ Gold Medal and Lecture Award 2021. Professor Begley is not only an outstanding and internationally recognised leader in the field of chemical biology and natural product synthesis but he has also inspired generations of chemists both here in Ireland and indeed internationally. Our warmest congratulations to Professor Begley. We are very much hoping that Professor Begley will be able to deliver his award lecture in person in 2022.

Team Ireland has achieved its best success to date in the International Chemistry Olympiad, which was held from Saturday, July 24 to Monday, August 2, 2021, with all four competing students receiving awards for the first time. Two students, Oisín Ó Feinneadha, from St. Peter’s College Secondary School, Wexford and Tong Wu, from Clongowes Wood College, Clane, Co. Kildare got silver medals, placing them in the top 10-30% of Chemistry students in the world. Oscar Despard, from Sandford Park School, Ranelagh, Dublin also received a bronze medal and Aoife Morris, from St. Aloysius’ College, Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork completed the extraordinary success of Team Ireland by getting an Honourable Mention award.

Warmest congratulations to theses exceptional students on not only their outstanding achievements but for also being wonderful Irish Student Ambassadors. Congratulations also to their teachers and schools and all those who supported them.  A special word of congratulations and thanks to the academic staff across five Irish Higher Education Institutions who provided expert training and support to these students.

Please find here a link to a recent article on ‘Younger Chemists Thriving during the Global COVID-19 Pandemic’ published in Chemistry Views, the online science news magazine of Chemistry Europe. Congratulations to the chair of the ICI Young Chemists’ Network (ICI YCN), Dr Mark Kelada, who contributed to this article.

If you have moved or you haven’t been receiving our emails, please update your contact details by emailing our honorary secretary,
Dr Emma Coyle at secretary@instituteofchemistry.org

The Irish Universities Chemistry Research Colloquium is run annually under the aegis of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland.
The University of Limerick is delighted to host the Colloquium this year on the 17th-18th June, 2021 as a virtual event hosted by the Department of Chemical Sciences and Bernal Institute. Further details may be found here.

72nd Irish Chemistry Research Colloquium 2021 brochure

Congratulations to Professor John Wenger, Professor in Physical and Environmental Chemistry, University College Cork, on being appointed by Minister Ryan to the Environmental Protection Agency Advisory Committee. Wishing Professor Wenger every success as he takes on this new and important role.

Congratulations to Professor Declan McCormack (TU Dublin) on being the 2019 recipient of the ICI Annual Award for Chemistry (Eva Philbin Public Lecture Series). Professor McCormack kindly agreed to having his award lecture recorded for the public to view.

The inaugural ICI Postgraduate Chemistry Research Symposium 2020, the very first virtual ICI event in its history, took place on September 9^th 2020 with over 150 registered delegates in attendance throughout the day. A special word of thanks to the Organising Committee for hosting this symposium and for bringing together postgraduate scholars from Institutions across Ireland and beyond, providing them with a unique opportunity to  share their cutting edge research and to build their professional networks, in a year when most physical conferences have been cancelled.

For a comprehensive report on the Symposium, please click ICI Postgraduate Chemistry Research Symposium 2020