Kathleen Lonsdale RIA Chemistry Prize 2023

[Music] my name is Linda Lonny until I retired

18 months ago I worked in the dictionary of Irish biography which is a project of

the royal Irish Academy Kathleen londsdale got one of the over 9,000 biographies that we wrote

for that publication along with a colleague andelina I worked on her life why should

we remember Kathleen Lonsdale why is this prize named in her

honor and why more generally should we remember her in Ireland she hadn’t the

best art in life at least the outward appearances she was born in 1903 the

youngest of 10 children in Newbridge County kildair her father was an

Englishman who was the town postmaster but he had a drink problem and when

Kathleen was only a small girl her mother separated from her father and

took her family of 10 children to England four of the children died in

infancy but Kathleen made a great success of her education she got the top

County scholarship to go to high school and when she was 16 she was able to go

to attend Bedford college for women in London the Nobel prizewinning

crystallographer w H Bragg was the external examiner on Kathleen’s

outstanding final degree exams and he was so impressed by the dimin of and

very determined young woman that there and then he asked her to join his group

in University College London to study the crystals of organic compounds she

developed novel techniques and insights and she was able to confirm the

structure of the Ben ring which was something that had puzzled scientists

including brag for more than 60 years another major contribution was her

compilation of essential reference tables for x-ray

crystallography so we should remember londsdale for more than her contributions to chemistry acknowledging

her importance as a role model for women and she was someone who made prti itical

recommendations on the changes to society that would make it possible for

more women to work in science and industry and still that isn’t all in

1935 she and her unusually supportive husband Thomas Lonsdale became members

of the Society of Friends and as Quakers they opposed

War but Kathleen Lonsdale ref refused to register for war work and thus was

sentenced to a month in holay prison her experiences of the dire conditions led

her to become a campaigner for prison reform later she also became

internationally known as a leader in movements opposing nuclear testing and

armaments and to finish with something to think about a quotation from Lonsdale

her s which is at least as relevant today to Young and to Old scientists at

least as relevant as it was in the 1950s I believe in good not just as a

hypothesis but is absolutely fundamental to all my way of life a scientist should

take interest in National and international Affairs not as a politician but in making sure that facts

are properly known and trying to ensure that science is used for good and not

for evil [Music]

purposes F in so I’m Pat Gan president of the

Rish Academy and it’s a great pleasure to welcome you all to the 20124 Kathleen londsdale Royal AR Academy chemistry PhD

ceremony is always wonder of the nicest days I have to say in the academy it’s always nice when there’s a celebration and someone gets an award everybody

seems to have smiley faces so that’s that’s a very important event we you know as academics we we sit at many

various meetings and many things where actually nobody Smiles at all so it’s actually nice to be here and an occasion

where I can look almost everybody looking up is smiling um sorry the photographer is not he’s busy doing his photography work so at the beginning of

the sty today I feel it appropriate to take a moment to acknowledge the incredible personal and professional achievements of Kathleen LEL which You’

just heard about for whom this chemistry prize was named like several in this room I’m the lever of research group and

as it turns out with many talented early career researchers we’re here today to recognize one such person Dr Billy

McCarthy congratulations Billy and award him this prestigious prize for his PhD thesis understanding the entry partition

and fate of chlorates in Dairy processes so as someone who grew up on a dairy farm in South tier who spent most of my

formative years have to say milk and cows and feeding calves I’d be interested to read your PhD the and see

where all that goes so I look forward to getting a copy at some stage and reading that so warm welcome to Dr McCarthy’s

PhD supervisors colleagues friends and family so you’re all very welcome and indeed re welcome to Academy house you

may well have passed by Dawson Street many occasions and peered Through the Windows and never really knows what goes

on in here don’t worry a lot of the people who come here don’t know what goes on in here either so I’m really trying to overcome that in many ways um

but it’s not just opposite Cafe on S which is where I always give people directions as to how to to get here but

it’s a really important National Institution so we’re the learning Society for STEM Science and also the

Arts Humanities and social sciences so we’re joined here by Dr Hugh Fay also of HL Ireland good to see you

again Hugh henle’s generous sponsorship of this award is vital in enabling us to recognize excellence in early career

research and chemistry and we’re indeed very grateful for your continuing sponsorship this priz is awarded by the

rology academy every year to the most outstanding Irish PhD thesis in the general area of the chemical Sciences it

aims to inspire confidence in young researchers rewarding their ambition and confirming their place in international

chemistry research the prize is named for and awarded in the spirit of Irish x-ray crystalograph Kathy lonel who

you’ve just heard about and she was a really a brilliant researcher from the beginning ping her first major contribution to crystallography at 21

You’ have heard about the fact that how her work was fundamental to determining the structure of benzene but of course

it wasn’t the extra crystal structure of benzene she determined at all because benzene’s a liquid and you can’t get an

extra crystal structure of a liquid but you can of a solid and hexamethyl Benzene which is just a derivative of

benzene is indeed a solid and I lecture first year organic chemistry in UCD and I always bring up that as an example and

I always see if there’s anyone there from kildere or at least any Lily white willing to pull up their names and I always make a big point of the fact that

she was born in Newbridge and you know as you heard then left uh to go to the UK so that’s the Benzene story out of

the way and it was it something that puzzled people for a long time because nobody had any real idea about the shape

and the fact that it was planer what type of hybridization was involved and we have a whole Kuli story about a snake

catching its tail so there’s a whole background to that um which I won’t bore you with anymore but there you go

organic chemist to talk about organic chemistry and that’s life as a scientist and a thoughtful and femous Fe Fearless

I should say female leader she engaged with the world in ways which still prove inspirational today the announcement of

the winner each year is time to coincide with lale’s birthday in January every February the win of the kath Londale Ro

Academy chemistry prize is nominated by the academy to be Ireland’s entry to the prestigious International Union of pure

and applied chemistry solve International award for young chemists this is a highly competitive

International prize and the iup PAC which is the abbreviation for that very long named um Society has members from

over 60 countries and winners of the international award are selected from a large volume of nominations the quality

of applications for the Kathleen londsdale prize this year was again outstanding we will hear from a member

of the judging panel Dr Nea oo about the judging process and the impressive impressive range of projects however

first we’ll hear a bit of an update from last year’s winner Dr Chun chin Lee who was supervised by Professor Steven Bell

who’s also a member of the r Academy and Indeed vice president for research in the academy as of March 16th this

year hi everyone I’m trr Lee the recipient of the castling laale press

2023 I completed my PhD at with Professor Steven Bal right now I’m

an associate professor at the University of Shanghai for Science and

Technology surface chemistry is particularly important for nanomaterials

which derive their unique properties from their large surface to volume ratio

so figuring out ways to observe and manipulate Nano surfaces is a golden

tiet to pushing nanotech forward to this end my PhD research was focused on

designing plasmonic nanomaterials that manipulate light at a nanoc scale to re

enhance the ramen signals of chemical species near the nanosurface this technique known as C

can be used to probe metal molecule interactions in C2 with molecular

specificity and the single molecule sensitivity using C I studied a series

of important surface chemistry Pro s during my PhD most notably this led to

the observation of strong petal interactions in cloudo nanop particles

that have been neglected for decades which is significant to a variety of

applications in sustainability and Health Care before I wrap up please let

me extend my congratulations to this year’s winner Dr

McCarthy I vividly recall the thrill and owner of receiving this press this press

is more than just a recognition to me it has been a cherished milstone and

continuous motivation that boosted my academic career I’m sure it will do the

same for you finally I would like to take this opportunity to thank again the

ra and Hano for such an amazing experience thank you all for

listening thank you to Dr Lee for contributing that video uh taking the time to tell us about um her

award-winning research and the impact of winning the kathen londsdale prize last year and I to thank the expert judging

panel of the Kathleen Lin prize for their commitment and expertise in the always difficult task of selecting a

winner the prize judges were Professor Sylvia Draper professor of V organic chemistry at Trinity College Dublin Dr

Eva Bo who will hear from later assistant professor in pharmaceutical chemistry in Trinity College Dublin Dr

John odono the Royal Society of Education Royal Society of chemistry education coordinator in the school of

chemistry Trinity College Dublin and Professor Peter Robertson professor of chemical engineering at Queens University in Belfast I now invite Dr

Neeve oo to say a few words about this year’s competition and indeed about our winner Neeve over to

you hi good afternoon everyone H my name is Neo Bo thank you for the kind introduction and I’m an associate

professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at Trinity College Dublin I’m also a proud Lily white um and yes I was tempted

um I grew up actually by coincidence just across the road in the house that kathen Lonsdale was born in so this

makes me particularly delighted to have been a judge for the 2024 Kathleen Lonsdale prize um this prize recognizes

the best Irish PhD thesis in the general area of chemical Sciences which is very broadly defined and it’s judged by three

things the first is an applicant essay the second is a publication list from the PHD and then finally there are two

letters of support H the Academy’s young chemist award was first awarded in 2020 so this

is the 25th uh year of the prize R you the 25th winner and this year we

received applications from right across the island of Ireland and the areas were incredibly diverse so for example there

was a thesis on Martian soil um rechargeable batteries and then

medicinal uh compounds as three examples um as always as Pat referred to the

standard of applications was extremely high and the applications were a real Showcase of the rigorous and impactful

research being carried AC out and by researchers on this island and it also the diversity that we saw really

reflects um how broadly the chemical Sciences can be applied so it’s all those different

areas so as the judging panel it’s a tough job but our role is to it’s twofold so first we assess the quality

of the PHD thesis itself and also very importantly the candidates ability ility

to communicate that in a condensed and accessible format so after this year’s

assessment process was carried out by a five member um panel uh we agreed to

award the 2024 prize to Dr Billy McCarthy from Technological University Dublin for his thesis understanding the

entry partition and fate of chlorates in Dairy processes so just a few words about the

thesis um Dr McCarthy is very impressive PhD thesis addresses the factors

affecting chlorate contamination in dairy products and proposes importantly an Innovative new method for chlorate

management so using a process called membrane filtration Dr McCarthy um uh

succeeded in developing an industrially feasible approach to chlorate removal from milk something that probably will

affect us all in the future and in doing so he has tackled a significant food safety challenge faced by the dairy

industry um in particular the assessment panel for the 2024 Kathleen Londale prize were

impressed by the clarity which which Dr McCarthy set out the parameters and aims of his PhD research in his application

essay he had two very strong letters of support from his PhD supervisors and

they particularly highlighted his passion for collaborative research and his interest in science communication I

think as a reflection of that Dr McCarthy published five peer-reviewed papers as the first author and together

with 11 conference presentations I can agree that’s very impressive delivered as a result of his PhD thesis he clearly

has gone above and beyond in both his research and his desire to disseminate it this is a very important piece of

research I believe that is likely to have a significant impact on the Irish Dairy sector Dr McCarthy who is now

working full-time at Chagas Mo Park food Research Center for a short while longer is evidently a skilled and conscientious

researcher who’s motivated by a desire to harness chemistry to really tackle real world

problems earlier in the year we were delighted to nominate Dr McCarthy as Ireland’s entry to the annual UPAC solve

young chemis prize as P also referred to and today we are so proud to be awarding

you the 2024 Kathleen Lonsdale Oria chemistry prize congratulations to Billy

[Applause] thank you D for sharing those thoughts

and remarks and we’re very grateful indeed to all the judges who for their expertise and input in assessing the

Kathleen Londale prize this year so I’d now like to introduce Dr Hugh Fay from our sponsor hle Dr Fay has been a

supporter of the Kathleen londsdale Royal AR Academy prize for the past eight years time flies the continuing

support of hkl has allowed us to Champion early career re chemistry research in Ireland and internationally Hugh over to you thank you so much and

hello everybody um the agenda for today was with military Precision there were things that you’re 3 minutes long for me

it said he will give a short speech which I guess my hour and a half last year was a bit ill judged know sorry

about this will be short honestly um and I will be repeating myself partly because it’s a different audience but um

just to tell you I’m from hkl and we have 90 people in research and development in tala working on H

adhesives on sealant and people 45% of those have phds and that’s across the

board so study and research at PhD level is really important to us so just to let

you know how we get the funding is that we’ve got to apply to a corporate uh

jury and they judge they are in charge of giving out money to to things like this throughout the world not through

that many events like this um and we so far eight years in a row or certainly

the last seven of the eight have had no problem getting the getting because it’s recogn ized as being really really good

um I’ve got to say a word of congratulations most you have lots of parents here you have academic parents

knocking around I think two you seem to have at least three certainly there’s two academic parents really proud you

have two real parents there behind you congratulations folks like this is a huge deal this really is a shining star

in Billy CV that’ll last him his whole life so you know congratulations to you for your your input in different ways

bringing him to G training and stuff whatever you did he was a child and Billy I just say two things to you enjoy

it there’s I know it’s you know look where you are but there’s not many days people are saying nice things about you

happens when you’re born and when you die and maybe you get married but other than that you know this this a precious

day um and I want to genuinely congratulations I only read the sumary obure Theses it sounds brilliant it

obviously has a fantastic level of academic input but also has a fantastic level of applicability you can read that

you’re probably one of the few people I see who could talk to somebody about their PHD work outside of chemistry I

certainly couldn’t talk might to anybody never mind someone outside so Billy

congratulations it’s a great day and and from behalf of hkl we’re really proud to be involved in this event

congrats thanks very much H and just in case you don’t understand just how important a PhD is in the Fay household

um whose daughter Ellen is right now giving her in chemistry of Ireland

research award presentation at the research colloquium down at Trinity College Dublin so congratulations to

Ellen and uh I’ve had to miss this to be here as they say but at 215 we have to go down and present prizes so um

congratulations to her so could I ask now Neeve please and Hugh to step forward again and I would now to invite

Dr to present the prize certificate and Dr V to present the prize envelope very important there’s something in the

envelope

thank you um yeah it’s been very humbling to hear all the nice things said about me it’s a thank you so much

no this is an honor Kathleen onale was an amazing scientist and role model in person so it’s honestly so humbling to

be here and be recognized today so I’m just going to give a quick talk through my PhD thesis which is understand the

ENT fate and partition of Chlor andary processes which I did with tu Dublin and chagus uh more Park uh under the wall

scholarship program so my academic career just a summary um started off in

UCC doing a bachelor degree in chemistry pharmacal compounds and then moved on to Chagas where I wanted to do an industry

Focus project on where I could get real world application my work uh during this time I got more involved in science

communication including uh Pub HD Cork and uh following my PhD I decided

to do a postoral fellowship in functional function properties bin variance uh in chagus again um to

continue my work there in food science so just an introduction to chlorates so

um chlorine compounds are wiely used in clean in place protocols so they’re typically used in food processing and

pharmaceuticals to make sure there’s no bacteriological contamination or physical contamination so the formation

of chlorin residues is raised concerning with food regulatory bodies so these being triome methanes and butter and

chlorates so uh chlorite is formed as a byproduct when using chlorine dioxide hypochlorite

which is primarily used in the chemical disinfection step but because of chlorine or hyp Chlor use in water

treatment it can affect the entire CIP cycle uh Chlor was first discovered in

Stuart in 2013 in the um on the German agricultureal produce market where it was in about 22% of produce there in

2023 um specifically milk it was detecting approximately half the Irish milk cream and yogurt samples by Mar

down here up in chag sash chloride is primarily issue because of two factors first is thyro toxicity uh iodine is

taken in by the thyroids to make thyroid hormones uh chloride can actually go into the thyroid instead of iodine um

and inhibit this synthesis which can lead to uh issues with neurological uh

development cognitive development so in the blood as well okay so it can oxidize

the iron center of the red blood cell from the iron 2 to the iron three oxidation state so blood essential

allows oxygen be carried around the body however in the presence of chlorate this can be oxidized oxygen can no longer

bind and uh cells tissues and organs are starred with oxygen uh so this can lead

to something called blue baby syndrome so uh within water there’s a maximum reg level of 250 microG per liter or um s

within the European Union but worldwide this is 700 micr per liter and initially in food for chloride because because

it’s a or it’s a pesticide it was initially established as 10 micr per liter um but then since it’s been

revised to 100 um so uh how does chlorate enter the

dairy supply chain so as mentioned before it’s primary true chlorinated water but also to the cleaning of fir

and processing equipment using chlorine uh products like hyp chloride so um it’s chloride is

particularly concerned to the infam milk formula companies due to its adverse health effects which babies are more prone to um and this has led to a

removal of chlorine detergents at a farm level and all the way through Dairy processing but chlorine contamination still persists as mentioned before so

the first part of the PHD was to uh put together all the L on the topic from soil environmental uh pharmaceutical and

other food areas to put together a document for the dairy uh industry so

that they could have a reference document and know exactly how this affects them what they can do to avoid it upon designing the project H it was

first noted that Chlor or chlorate goes with the skin milk side so it’s not fat

soluble uh so I decided to focus on three main areas firstly how chlorate vs during heat treatment secondly uh how it

would behave during membrane filteration and finally spray D evaporation so uh

first with the fat chlorate and raw patr milk we found that there was no uh there was no real um impact of heating the

milk milk but what we did find is that over time depending on if it was pasteurized or

incubated uh or raw that it would break down differently so the raw milk actually started to break down after

about a week so um upon doing more investigation it was noted that

microbial reduction could be responsible and what was interesting is that this was not actually noted in milk before

but had been noted in water and soil so I’m not going to get into the isolation steps as they were tedious but um I

managed to isolate out five different strains um which were all uh capable of reducing chloride um but none none of

them had genes associated with um per chlorite reduction um but upon growing them again

in chlorate rich media uh they all seem to be able to grow so they’re able to metabolize the chlorate but the mechanism is still not known or um it’s

still being investigated at the moment yeah so uh this was actually published in microbiology but also a new wall

scholarship uh was funded to look into the further into the genomic and the

metagenomic uh instances and what’s happening here so next was uh the use of nanofiltration uh

to remove chloride from milk so um so upon starting the project

there was no documentary means of removing chlorate once present in milk which was a major issue for the dairy industry as any contaminated product had

to be sent to waste um and upon looking at this and looking at the possible options out

there membrane technology was one that I highlighted due to its wide use in the D insurity and no need for new

infrastructure or training on the topic so uh with iner there are two primarily used ones so nanofiltration reverse

osmosis uh reverse osmosis would concentrate up or was found to concentrated Chlor so wasn’t a suitable

uh process so we focus on nanof filteration so uh using membranes we were able to remove 60% of the chlorate

and milk uh on a dry matter basis and this was something that not that hadn’t been done before we also looked at the

how the different minerals of milk are also affected as if we were able to remove all the minerals from milk it wouldn’t be useful uh a useful uh

process but chloride actually uh separate out at a faster rate than everything else so it was actually more

it was suitable um in Dairy processing so this was published in the international dairy journal and because

of Chagas link to Industry and to uh uh stakeholders this has been

implemented cross Irish Dairy sites um to uh remediate out of spefication uh

products and as a critical control step to for dairy coming in uh finally uh I

looked at the contribution of Municipal Water uh to chloric contamination during skill milk and powder production so

there are five stages to uh to traditional Dairy processing so uh

equipment operation so at first you put water on the system uh just get everything up to temperature make sure

Works efficiently secondly you transition from your water to your skin milk or your uh whatever product you’re

going to process uh then you go to St SE operation which is where you produce

your product finally you are then you change from your milk to your water again as part of a cleaning step and

then you run on water finally just to system flush and before

cleaning so uh I decided to focus on these two steps so from there uh I was I

looked at uh I did this in the mor Park technology limited which is our industry scale plant in jagas Mor Park um so I

got pasteurized milk uh put it to an evaporator spray dryer to produce skin milk and I did this in two different

conditions so one being with uh just Municipal Water so water from the top so

it’s treated with chlorine so it would have chlorine in it so chloride could be

there uh secondly I looked at reverse osmosis which is pure water which would not have chloride possible as a control

so um what I found is that when evaporation so we actually found that

initially there was a chloride level much higher than that was present in the

milk uh and we put that to words at the start of evaporation it’s like a kettle so the water level gets lower you’re

running it constantly and the water the chlorate in the water actually concentrated up before putting the

product in which led to an initial High spike in a Chlor levels um alternatively

with r with the reverse osmosis water uh operation we did not see this so it was

highlighted as a uh best process for industry so and also that batching of

milk concentrate prior to spray drying could mitigate it so collecting large amounts before bring it

over then we move uh then I looked at spray drying on our uh 5,000 lit spray

dryer in ch in MTL uh and found that uh like in the

evaporator they start and the finish so the transition onto the product and transition back onto water where the

initial or where the instances where there was highest chloride contamination and this was because of the water coming

into contact with the milk forming particle and the chlorate being part of that particle then so um yeah uh it was

then so from this uh there was a publication and through again through interaction with stakeholders this has

become best practice on many dairy sites particularly those who are in water cat

areas with known High Chlor levels from this was possible to help industry deal with this issue so uh just some

conclusions from this uh so bacterial strains capable of Chlor reduction have

for milk and they’re being further investigated by new wall scholar in Chagas Moore Park um yeah so uh mem processing which

was widely available and readily used in the D industry indicated as a Chlor removal meth method from milk uh which

uh could deal with out specification product the use of our water during equilibration spray drying uh could

reduce chloric contamination final powders uh which is particularly important for infant formula where

everything we put through a spray dryer so um that is pretty much my talk today

I’d like to thank my uh supervisor so professor John tolbin who can’t be here today Professor Christian o Conor from

tud uh Dr Tom Khan Dr Martin Daner uh Dr David gleon

uh my friends and colleagues and family um as well uh particularly my parents who who get a special shout out but um

and finally I’d like to thank um the ra and hle for this honor it’s been it’s

been a fantastic um it’s been a fantastic achievement and I’m I’m truly

honored that you recognize my work with this award oh thank you so

much well thanks to Dr mcarthy for his Fascination presentation and you might have G across the road from where kathen

lond lives but actually my neighbor across the road is the son of Professor Walsh who’s the W scholarships so who

said AR’s a small place huh so it was a pleasure to learn more about your project well done and indeed your research career so far and we wish you

all the very best for the future so congratulations again to you and thank you to our members and guests judges and

sponsor for joining us here today to celebrate the RO Academy Prize awarde Dr Billy McCarthy and indeed we now invite

you in a time honored fashion to join us for even more Refreshments in the council room with the back

so a [Applause]