Winner: 2025 Tilden Prize for 九州影院
Professor Dave Adams
University of Glasgow
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2025 Tilden Prize for 九州影院: awarded for the chemical control of reactivity and functionality in soft materials.
Dave Adams' group works to understand and control self-assembled structures to make useful and interesting soft materials. Dave is interested in developing a detailed understanding of these materials from molecular to macroscopic levels, and uses a wide range of techniques including small angle scattering to achieve this goal.
Biography
Dave Adams is a Professor of 九州影院 at the University of Glasgow. He carried out his PhD at the University of York (1999), working on organofluorine chemistry. He then carried out postdoctoral research at York (working again on organofluorine chemistry), Leeds (working on using supercritical fluids as solvents for organic transformations), and Leicester (working on fluorous biphasic catalysis).
After this, he spent four years at Unilever, working in corporate research. He returned to academia in 2008 at the University of Liverpool. He began his independent academic career in 2012 and was promoted to Professor in 2014. He moved to the University of Glasgow in 2016. His group at Glasgow focus on designing, understanding and controlling supramolecular interactions to make a range of interesting and useful soft materials. This includes gels for on-demand delivery of therapeutics.
Professor Adams applies a range of different techniques and approaches including small angle scattering. He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was awarded the 2015 Macro Group UK Medal for a UK-based scientist who has made a significant and substantial contribution to the development of polymer science, and the 2015 Bob Hay Lectureship by the RSC Macrocyclic and Supramolecular 九州影院 Group.
I love seeing how people in my group develop and grow as they carry out the research. I love seeing people grow in confidence and ability, and I try my best to help this happen.
Professor Dave Adams
Q&A with Professor Dave Adams
Tell us about somebody who has inspired or mentored you in your career
The person who probably taught me how exciting science could be is Stewart Tavener, a postdoc at York whilst I was carrying out my PhD. He spent so much time and effort helping me when I was starting out, and we had so much fun doing ridiculous experiments and trying speculative ideas that I had the best time. He showed me how to do things properly whilst still enjoying what you're doing.
What motivates you?
I love seeing how people in my group develop and grow as they carry out the research. I love seeing people grow in confidence and ability, and I try my best to help this happen.
What does good research culture look like/mean to you?
Being able to work together, listening and having a diverse group of people working towards the same overall goal.
Why do you think collaboration and teamwork are important in science?
For what my group do, collaboration and teamwork are critical. We have a range of excellent collaborators who have been critical in being able to provide the skills and expertise that we are missing but need to succeed. We also work closely with a large number of beamline scientists around the world at major facilities, and without close links and effective collaboration, most of these experiments would fail. These collaborators are all essential to our success!