Inorganic Chemistry

About Dr Jonathan RourkeDr Tina OvertonProf Fraser ArmstrongProf Mark WellerProf Simon Lancaster

Mark Weller is an honorary professor of chemistry at Cardiff University.  His research interests cover a wide range of synthetic and structural inorganic chemistry including photovoltaic compounds zeolites battery materials and specialist pigments. Mark has taught both inorganic chemistry and physical chemistry methods at undergraduate and postgraduate levels for over 40 years with his lectures covering topics across materials chemistry the inorganic chemistry of the s- and f- block elements and analytical methods applied to inorganic compounds. He is a co-author of OUPs Characterisation Methods in Inorganic Chemistry and an OUP Primer (23) on Inorganic Materials Chemistry. Jonathan Rourke is Reader in Chemistry at Cardiff University and Honorary Professor of Chemistry at the University of Warwick. He received his PhD at the University of Sheffield on organometallic polymers and liquid crystals followed by postdoctoral work in Canada and back in Britain. His initial independent research career began at Bristol University and then at Warwick before he moved to Cardiff. Over the years Dr Rourke has taught most aspects of inorganic chemistry all the way from basic bonding through symmetry analysis to advanced transition metal chemistry. Fraser Armstrong is an Emeritus Research Fellow of St Johns College University of Oxford. He was an Associate Professor at the University of California Irvine before joining the Department of Chemistry at Oxford in 1993. His interests span the fields of renewable energy hydrogen enzymology mechanistic biological inorganic chemistry and electrocatalysis by enzymes. He has received numerous awards and honours including the European Medal for Biological Inorganic Chemistry (1998) the Joseph Chatt Medal (2010) The Davy Medal of the Royal Society (2012) the Bailar Medal of the University of Illinois (2015/16) the Glenn T. Seaborg Lectureship in Inorganic Chemistry University of California Berkeley (2021-22) and the Mok Hing-Yiu Distinguished Visiting Professorship in Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong 2023-25. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in 2008. Simon Lancaster has taught Chemistry at the University of East Anglia since his appointment as a lecturer in 2000. He won a National Teaching Fellowship and an RSC Higher Education Teaching Award in 2013 for 'blurring the boundaries between the internet and the lecture theatre'. Simon was promoted to a chair in Chemistry Education in 2014. He was selected as one of RSC's 175 face of diversity in 2016 and championed inclusion and diversity as President of the Education Division Council from 2017-2020. He is a passionate advocate for evidence-based teaching innovation and is in demand as a speaker and consultant well beyond the chemistry arena. He has shaped UEA's Science teaching provision as Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching since 2022 and has led the adoption of tailored active blended learning approaches and extended reality technologies. He regards the lecture theatre as his laboratory and continues to teach over 100 contact hours a year. Tina Overton was the Director of the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence at the University of Leeds UK.