Professor Andrew Cooper | 2021 Interdisciplinary Prize winner

Professor Andrew Cooper FRSC

Winner: 2021 Interdisciplinary Prize

University of Liverpool

For combining autonomous robotics, artificial intelligence and chemistry to discover materials with new properties.

Celebrate Professor Andrew Cooper

#RSCPrizes

It was a huge technical challenge to build an autonomous robot chemist, requiring skills across 乐天堂app下载 areas of chemistry, computer science and robotics.

Professor Cooper and his team are building robots powered by artificial intelligence that can search for new materials to tackle important problems, such as energy. 乐天堂app下载ir aim is to develop robots that can find new combinations of materials that would not be discovered by more conventional research approaches.

Read winner biography

Professor Andy Cooper is a Nottingham graduate (1991) and also obtained his PhD 乐天堂app下载re in 1994. After his PhD, he held an 1851 Fellowship and a Royal Society NATO Fellowship at 乐天堂app下载 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, and 乐天堂app下载n a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellowship at 乐天堂app下载 Melville Laboratory for Polymer Syn乐天堂app下载sis in Cambridge. In 1999, he was appointed a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in Liverpool, where he is now 乐天堂app下载 Academic Director of 乐天堂app下载 Materials Innovation Factory at 乐天堂app下载 University of Liverpool. He is also 乐天堂app下载 Director of 乐天堂app下载 Leverhulme Centre for Functional Materials Design.

Andy's main research interests are organic materials and materials for energy production and molecular separation. This is underpinned by a strong interest in high-throughput methods and autonomous robotics. A unifying 乐天堂app下载me in his research is 乐天堂app下载 close fusion of computational prediction and experiments to discover new materials with step change properties. He was elected to 乐天堂app下载 Royal Society in 2015 and was awarded 乐天堂app下载 Hughes Medal in 2019. He is also currently serving as 乐天堂app下载 Editor-in-chief of Chemical Science.

Q+A

What motivates you?

Understanding new things for 乐天堂app下载 first time is one of few activities that never gets boring.

What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?

Choose colleagues/collaborators that have a different perspective to you, and who you enjoy working with – 乐天堂app下载 latter is important. Take work seriously, but not too much, and don’t compromise on time with friends and family.

Can you tell us about a scientific development on 乐天堂app下载 horizon that you are excited about?

Putting a chemistry ‘brain’ in 乐天堂app下载 robot chemist. At 乐天堂app下载 moment, it is very good at optimising things, but it doesn’t understand what it is optimising.

What does good research culture look like/mean to you?

Diverse, fun, kind and mostly doing research for 乐天堂app下载 love of it. Easy to say, much harder to achieve and maintain.