Prof. Polly Arnold, University of California
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Prof. Polly Arnold

Nominated by

  • The Royal Society of Edinburgh
  • AcademiaNet member since 28.03.2017
  • AcademiaNet- Selection Criteria


Employed by

  • University of California


Academic Discipline/Fields

  • Natural sciences, mathematics and statistics


Field

Physical sciences



Area of specialisation

Molecular coordination chemistry of the f-block elements with relevance to catalysis and nuclear waste



Research interests

  • Design and synthesis of highly reactive f-block complexes that can activate inert small molecules such as carbon oxides, atmospheric nitrogen, and hydrocarbons, and that can provide fundamental information on structure and bonding or the metals at the bottom of the periodic table.



Distinctions and Awards

  • Academia Europaea. 2019 elected to the membership of the Academy

  • FRS, 2018. Elevated to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, London, UK

  • Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry 2018. For pioneering research into transuranic organometallic chemistry

  • Todd-Krebs Lectureship 2018 of the German Chemical Society GDCh. For advances in chemistry

  • Lord Kelvin Prize, Royal Society of Edinburgh 2017. Scotland’s senior physical sciences research prize

  • OBE, 2017. Admitted to the Queen’s most Excellent Order of the British Empire, for services to chemistry and women in STEM, in the Queens’s birthday honours

  • The Chancellor's Prize for Research 2017, Edinburgh. Awarded by HRH Princess Royal

  • Seaborg Visiting Professorship 2017. Seaborg Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA

  • E. Gordon Young Lectureship 2017. Chemical Institute of Canada

  • Ambassador of the Technical University, Munich, Germany



Languages

English



Doctorate

  • 1997: Organometallic chemistry




Short CV/Education and training

  • Since 2019
    Professor of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley

  • Since 2019
    Director of the Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • 2007
    Crum Brown Chair of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, UK

  • 1999
    Lectureship at the University of Nottingham, UK

  • 1997
    Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA

  • 1994, 1997 Undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in chemistry: BA(Hons) from the University of Oxford, UK, and DPhil. from the University of Sussex, UK

Selected publications

  • Actinide metallacyclic catalysts for dinitrogen conversion to ammonia and secondary silylamines. P. L. Arnold, T. Ochiai, F. Y. T. Lam, R. P. Kelly, M. L. Seymour, L. Maron, Nature Chem. 2020, 12 (7), 654-659.

  • Thermal and photochemical reduction and functionalisation chemistry of the uranyl dication. B. E. Cowie, J. M. Purkis, J. Austin, J. B. Love, and P. L. Arnold. Chem. Rev., 2019 119, 10595-673.

  • Controlled Photocatalytic hydrocarbon oxidation by uranyl complexes. P. L. Arnold, J. M. Purkis, R. Rutkauskaite, D. Kovacs, J. B. Love, and J. Austin. ChemCatChem, 2019 11, 3786-3790.

  • Selective and catalytic carbon dioxide and heteroallene activation mediated by cerium N-heterocyclic carbene complexes. P. L. Arnold, R. W. F. Kerr, C. Weetman, S. R. Docherty, J. Rieb, F. L. Cruickshank, K. Wang, C. Jandl, M. W. McMullon, A. Pothig, F. E. Kuhn, and A. D. Smith. Chem. Sci., 2018 9, 8035-45.

  • Actinide catalysts for carbon oxygenate transformations. P. L. Arnold, Z. R. Turner, Nature Chem. Rev. 2017, in press. doi:10.1038/s41570-016-0002.

  • Organometallic neptunium(III) complexes. M. S. Dutkiewicz, J. H. Farnaby, C. Apostolidis, E. Colineau, O. Walter, N. Magnani, M. G. Gardiner, J. B. Love, N. Kaltsoyannis, R. Caciuffo, P. L. Arnold. Nature Chem., 2016 8, 797-802.

  • Metal–metal bonding in uranium–group 10 complexes. J. A. Hlina, J. R. Pankhurst, N. Kaltsoyannis, P. L. Arnold. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2016 138, 3333-45.



Complete list of publications

Media coverage

  • 'The Infinite Monkey Cage' BBC Radio 4, a comedy science program, 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000937h

  • 'Brainwaves' BBC Radio Scotland, a popular science program, 2018.https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09trwf0.

Soft Skills/Other activities and achievements

Additional interests

Equity, diversity and inclusion work

  • Creator and Executive Producer of 'A Chemical Imbalance' (www.chemicalimbalance.ed.ac.uk); a short book and documentary about women in science

  • Chair of the Inclusion and Diversity Committee, Royal Society of Chemistry, UK, until 2019

  • CoPI on 'Evidence Base: Growing the Big Grant Club'. Funded by the UK EPSRC funding council, Evidence base has been established to promote and execute a systems based approach to problems of equality, diversity and inclusion in STEM. https://evidencebase.org.uk/


Soft Skills

  • Tweets as @ProfArno on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion matters. Over 3800 genuine followers that include learned societies, international scientific publishers and journalists, parliamentary party leaders and policy makers


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