Polly Arnold
Berkeley University of California (USA)
Invited Lecture
"Selective alkane oxidation by uranyl photocatalysts; the importance of ligand control"
Polly Arnold OBE FRS FRSE MAE is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Her group studies exploratory synthesis and catalysis with the earth abundant lanthanides, and new reaction chemistry of the actinides, providing fundamental contributions to our understanding of electronic structure and bonding in the f block.
After degrees at Oxford and Sussex, Polly moved to MIT as a Fulbright Scholar. She returned to the UK to hold faculty positions at Nottingham then Edinburgh, and has been at Berkeley since 2019. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy, and a fellow of the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy. She was appointed to the Order of the British Empire, OBE, in 2017.