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The Committee

The committee convene twice a year to discuss the business of the MSG, with a primary focus on proposing and establishing high quality scientific meetings for our members.
 
The MSG Committee, Burlington House, March 2010.
(Left to right: John Chalmers, Steven Coombes, Ben Bardsley, Howell Edwards & David Andrews)

Chairman
Steven Coombes
Steve is an NMR Spectroscopist at AstraZeneca in Macclesfield. His interests include small molecule structure elucidation, reaction monitoring and the development and implementation of software solutions for data processing. He was previously employed at Pfizer until 2008 working in the Analytical R&D group. Steve completed his 1st degree and PhD at the University of Bradford, studying natural product isolation and synthesis. Steve has been on the RSC MSG committee since 2006 and will take over as Chairman in March 2010.
  
Treasurer
Paul Thomas
Awaiting content
 
 
 
 


Secretary & Vice Chairman
Ben Bardsley
Ben is an NMR spectroscopist working in the pharmaceutical industry for GlaxoSmithKline in Stevenage.  He also has experience in vibrational spectroscopy and is part of a team which provides structure elucidation and spectroscopic skills to problem solving in drug development.  Ben completed his first degree in Natural Sciences and a PhD in the field of molecular recognition at Christ's College, University of Cambridge.  Ben has been a member of the RSC MSG Committee since 2007 and took over as Honorary Secretary in 2009.
 
 
Ex-Chairman
John Chalmers
John worked as an industrial vibrational spectroscopist for 34 years; since 2000 John has been a self-employed consultant, specialising in infrared and Raman spectroscopy. John has served the RSC MSG committee in various officer positions for many years. John is a past president of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy, he is article editor for Spectroscopy Europe, and a co-editor of the highly acclaimed 5-volume reference work Handbook of
                                          Vibrational Spectroscopy, published in 2002. 
 

 Committee Member

                       Howell Edwards
Howell Edwards is Professor of Molecular Spectroscopy and  Head of Chemical & Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford. He is interested in the applications of analytical Raman spectroscopy to forensic archaeology and art, geoscience, pharmaceuticals, drugs and contraband materials in a forensic context. As Director of the Centre for Astrobiology and Extremophiles Research he leads the Science Support Team on the ESA ExoMars project to place a miniaturised remote Raman spectrometer for the detection of spectroscopic biogeological life signatures on the surface of Mars.
 
 
 Committee member
 
Heather Chassaing
Heather Chassaing is a metabolite identification specialist for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Sandwich.  She has expertise in small molecule and peptide charaterisation in addition to chromatography and mass spectrometry instrumentation. She also has a keen interest in software solutions for interpreting complex mass spectromtry data.  Prior to working at Pfizer, Heather worked at Syngenta Agrochemicals developing high throughput metabolite profiling techniques, following a PhD in Ecotoxicology from Plymouth University and a degree in Biochemistry from Aberystwyth.