{"id":3332,"date":"2015-12-23T10:27:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T10:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/dial-a-molecule\/?p=3332"},"modified":"2016-01-08T09:31:21","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T09:31:21","slug":"promoting-the-education-and-deployment-of-statistical-methods-in-academia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/dial-a-molecule\/promoting-the-education-and-deployment-of-statistical-methods-in-academia\/","title":{"rendered":"Promoting the Education and Deployment of Statistical Methods in Academia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/span><\/h4>\n

More and more, chemistry is taking advantage of the technological revolution that has taken place over the last 20 years.\u00a0 For example, automation of what were once seen as manual procedures can now be routinely carried out 24\/7 without the need for an operator to be present. As a consequence, increasingly large amounts of data are routinely generated in chemistry labs on a day-to-day basis. \u00a0The result is the chemist of today has access to far more data than ever before, but, to transform this raw data into useful information, knowledge of both chemistry and statistical methods is required.<\/p>\n

The Dial-a-Molecule vision<\/span><\/h4>\n

The overall vision of Dial-a-Molecule is that \u201cin 20-40 years, scientists will be able to deliver any desired molecule within a timeframe useful to the end-user, using safe, economically viable and sustainable processes<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2012, the Roadmap for Synthesis in the 21st Century was published by the EPSRC Dial-a-Molecule Grand Challenge Network.\u00a0 Under the \u201cLab of the Future<\/a>\u201d Theme, the Roadmap stated that \u201cthe use of Design of Experiments and other statistical methods for reaction optimization is well established in process chemistry, or in an industrial setting, but little used in small scale \u2018discovery\u2019 chemistry (e.g. academic research labs), often because of the overhead imposed by its use and the unfamiliarity of the technique<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 It went onto propose \u201cin the short term, a priority should be to increase the familiarity of synthetic chemists with the techniques used in process chemistry and process engineering<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 Although DoE and statistical methods won\u2019t solve Dial-a-Molecule, \u201cembedding DoE and other statistical methods into PG training is important to develop the generation of chemists who will be responsible for developing the Dial-a-Molecule idea.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Statistical methods alone won\u2019t solve Dial-a-Molecule, but a community that understands how and when to apply DoE (and other methods such as Principal Components Analysis) will be able to derive understanding and hasten the extrapolation of preliminary results to usable processes through, amongst other things, routine investigation (and understanding) of reproducibility, study of reaction parameters and accelerated discovery of \u2018unexpected\u2019 reaction factors (e.g. role of impurities, unexpected synergies or interactions).<\/p>\n

Progress towards this vision:<\/span><\/h4>\n

Working towards achieving these goals, Dial-a-Molecule has organized two community events on \u201cExperimental Design: An Essential Skill for Chemists<\/strong>\u201d.\u00a0 The first of these was held on 12 May 2014 (Burlington House, Royal Society of Chemistry, London)<\/a> and brought together 33 members of the community to gain an appreciation of the current state of the art (e.g. what the situation is throughout UK HEI\u2019s, resources available, what the gaps are) and find a way forward.\u00a0 The following aims were defined:<\/p>\n