The Dial-a-Molecule INDUSTRY FOCUS MEETING recently took place at the SCI, London on Monday, 11th April and was well attended by representatives of companies from across the chemical-using industries, including pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, catalysis and fine chemicals. Technology and solution providers, ranging from equipment suppliers to modelling and cheminformatics companies, were also represented together with key people from professional bodies and research councils, including the RSC and MRC.
Since the launch of the Grand Challenge in October 2010 9 focus area have been developed under the themes of Lab of the Future & Synthetic Route Selection (4 focus areas), Catalytic Paradigms for 100% efficient synthesis (3 focus areas) and A Step Change in Molecular Synthesis (2 focus areas).
Industry input was invaluable in initially developing these themes, but the INDUSTRY FOCUS MEETING was important to give the themes a broader industrial steer & to make them as industry relevant, academically challenging and fundable as possible.
There was strong support for the proposed themes and focus areas and the meeting has allowed these areas to be more tightly focused and prioritised.
Ambition & Next Steps
The ambitions of Dial-a-Molecule are straightforward:
- To facilitate the formation of effective networks & consortia to address the themes of Dial-a-Molecule
- To establish new collaborations and initiated grant proposals (or alternative funding mechanisms)
- To raise the profile of Synthesis as a Grand Challenge.
These ambitions will be realised through a series of theme meetings which will be announced shortly. The Grand Challenge is mandated to produce a Technology Delivery Roadmap (October 2011) which will detail the steps required to address the challenges & the research proposals which will progress the work.
