Professor Charlotte Williams

Charlotte K. Williams OBE FRS is a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Associate Head of Department (Research) in Oxford Chemistry. She is also an EPSRC Established Career Research Fellow. She heads-up a research group investigating polymerisation catalysis and polymer chemistry, with a particular focus on improving polymer sustainability. She develops highly active catalysts that transform abundant renewable resources and wastes into polymers. These catalysts enable natural bio-chemicals and carbon dioxide to replace petrochemicals in scalable materials production. By combining expertise in catalysis and polymer chemistry, the goal is to deliver materials with better properties than today’s petrochemicals and which are designed for endlife recycling and (bio)degradation. Her work has been recently recognised by her election as a fellow of the Royal Society (2021), election to the Academia Europea (2021), the RSC Tilden Prize (2020) and an OBE for Services to Chemistry (2020). From 2003-2016, Charlotte was an academic in Chemistry at Imperial College London. Earlier in her career, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge University (2002-2003), working with Andrew Holmes FRS and Richard Friend FRS (Organometallic polymers for electronics), and at the University of Minnesota (2001-2002) working with Bill Tolman and Marc Hillmyer (zinc catalysts for lactide polymerisation). She obtained her BSc and PhD from Imperial College London, the latter supervised by Vernon Gibson FRS and Nick Long on ethene polymerisation catalysis.