Thomas Welton (born January 1964) is a Professor of

Sustainable Chemistry Green chemistry, also called sustainable chemistry, is an area of chemistry and chemical engineering focused on the design of products and processes that minimize or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. While environmental che ...

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

. He served as Head of the Department of Chemistry from 2007 to 2014 and as Dean of the

Faculty of Natural Sciences A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...

from 2015 to 2019. He is a Fellow and the current President of the

Royal Society of Chemistry The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society (professional association) in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemistry, chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the Ro ...

. Welton's research focuses on

sustainable chemistry Green chemistry, also called sustainable chemistry, is an area of chemistry and chemical engineering focused on the design of products and processes that minimize or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. While environmental che ...

, with particular focus on

ionic liquid An ionic liquid (IL) is a salt in the liquid state. In some contexts, the term has been restricted to salts whose melting point is below a specific temperature, such as . While ordinary liquids such as water and gasoline are predominantly made of ...

s and on

solvent effects In chemistry, solvent effects are the influence of a solvent on chemical reactivity or molecular associations. Solvents can have an effect on solubility, stability and reaction rates and choosing the appropriate solvent allows for thermodynamic a ...

chemical reactions A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that only involve the positions of electrons in the forming and breaking ...

. Welton is

openly gay Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...

and is active in advocating for greater visibility for members of the

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

community in the sciences. He is a member of the

UKRI UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is a non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom that directs research and innovation funding, funded through the science budget of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial St ...

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion External Advisory Group.

Education

Welton has said that his interest in chemistry originated with his

A-level The A-Level (Advanced Level) is a subject-based qualification conferred as part of the General Certificate of Education, as well as a school leaving qualification offered by the educational bodies in the United Kingdom and the educational aut ...

chemistry class. As a child he wanted to fly for the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

. He received his

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

(Hons) in chemistry in 1985 from the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

, and his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

from the same institution in 1990 under the supervision of Kenneth Seddon. He was inspired by the

Nobel Laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...

Harry Kroto Sir Harold Walter Kroto (born Harold Walter Krotoschiner; 7 October 1939 – 30 April 2016), known as Harry Kroto, was an English chemist. He shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for their discovery of ...

. He has cited the institution's positive environment for the LGBT community at the time as a positive influence.

Career and research

Welton began his career at Imperial College London as a

Lloyd's of London Lloyd's of London, generally known simply as Lloyd's, is an insurance and reinsurance market located in London, England. Unlike most of its competitors in the industry, it is not an insurance company; rather, Lloyd's is a corporate body gov ...

Tercentenary Fellow in 1993. He became a

lecturer Lecturer is an List of academic ranks, academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. T ...

in 1995 and was promoted to

full professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

in 2004. During his tenure he has served as the Department of Chemistry's Director of Undergraduate Studies and served as the Head of the Department of Chemistry from 2007 to 2014. He also served as Dean of the

from January 2015 until his term ended in December 2019. Welton is a trustee of the Lloyd's Tercentenary Research Foundation. Since 2013 he has been a member of the Council of the Royal Society of Chemistry and additionally serves on the steering committee for the RSC's diversity programme. Between 2015 and 2018 Welton served as Chair of the Memberships and Qualifications Board. He was appointed Chair of the Professional Standards Board in 2018. He succeeded Professor Dame Carol Robinson as President of the RSC in July 2020.

Research

Welton works in the field of

, and has spent most of his career studying the properties of

s, their interactions with

solutes In chemistry, a solution is a special type of homogeneous mixture composed of two or more substances. In such a mixture, a solute is a substance dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent. If the attractive forces between the solvent ...

, and the resulting

effects Effect may refer to: * A result or change of something ** List of effects ** Cause and effect, an idiom describing causality Pharmacy and pharmacology * Drug effect, a change resulting from the administration of a drug ** Therapeutic effect, a ...

chemical reaction A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the IUPAC nomenclature for organic transformations, chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that only involve the pos ...

s. He was the world's first Professor of Sustainable Chemistry. His research group also works on applications for these phenomena in developing environmentally safe

organic synthesis Organic synthesis is a special branch of chemical synthesis and is concerned with the intentional construction of organic compounds. Organic molecules are often more complex than inorganic compounds, and their synthesis has developed into one o ...

methods and in the production of

biofuel Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels, such as oil. According to the United States Energy Information Administration (E ...

s. Ionic liquids became commercially available in 1999, meaning that you 'no longer had to be an expert in the synthesis of ionic liquids to be able to use these in your research'. His 1999 review, ''Room-Temperature Ionic Liquids. Solvents for Synthesis and Catalysis'', has been cited over 13,000 times. He is best known for quantifying the effects of ionic liquids on reactions, providing a mechanistic understanding of ionic liquids and establishing how they can be used in organic synthesis. He was also instrumental in linking the fundamental physical properties of ionic liquids to their chemical behaviours. Along with

Peter Wasserscheid Peter Wasserscheid (born 23 October 1970, in Würzburg) is a German chemist and professor for chemical reaction engineering at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Together with Matthias Beller he won the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2006. ...

, Welton co-edited a book, ''Ionic Liquids in Synthesis'', first released in 2002 with a second edition in 2008. The first edition was reviewed positively as a significant introduction to the then-newly-developing field and the second expanded edition was described as excellent and comprehensive. He also joine
Christian Reichardt
as an author of the fourth edition of the reference work ''Solvents and Solvent Effects in Organic Chemistry'', reviewed as an important reference for organic chemists. Welton's work on ionic liquids led to the invention of a method to process

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...

by separating its chemical component

lignin Lignin is a class of complex organic polymers that form key structural materials in the support tissues of most plants. Lignins are particularly important in the formation of cell walls, especially in wood and bark, because they lend rigidity ...

from

hemicellulose A hemicellulose (also known as polyose) is one of a number of heteropolymer, heteropolymers (matrix polysaccharides), such as arabinoxylans, present along with cellulose in almost all embryophyte, terrestrial plant cell walls.Scheller HV, Ulvskov H ...

and

cellulose Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to many thousands of β(1→4) linked D-glucose units. Cellulose is an important structural component of the primary cell wall ...

, which is potentially applicable to the efficient production of

biofuels Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels, such as oil. According to the United States Energy Information Administration (E ...

. Welton also comments in the media on matters related to the health of the

environment Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally * Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...

, such as the 2012

shortage In economics, a shortage or excess demand is a situation in which the demand for a product or service exceeds its supply in a market. It is the opposite of an excess supply ( surplus). Definitions In a perfect market (one that matches a sim ...

helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...

gas commonly used in research laboratories.

Diversity and inclusion

Welton is an advocate for diversity in academic science. In 2013, under Welton's leadership, the

Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London The Department of Chemistry is responsible for chemistry teaching and research at Imperial College London. The department has around 50 academic staff and 850 students, with around 550 studying undergraduate courses and 300 research students. Th ...

was one of four university departments in the United Kingdom to be awarded an

Athena SWAN Athena SWAN (Scientific Women's Academic Network) is a quality charter mark framework and accreditation scheme established and managed by the UK Equality Challenge Unit (now part of Advance HE) in 2005 that recognises and celebrates good practi ...

Gold Award in recognition of efforts to promote women in science. He supports academic institutions around the world in their efforts to improve diversity and equality. In January 2017 Welton toured Australia to share good practise in supporting academic women. In 2014, together with Alison Rodger, Welton established the Irène Joliot-Curie conference that looked to develop the careers for women and underrepresented groups in science. The conference included talks from leading women in chemistry, and is now run annually by the

. Welton was appointed to the

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion External Advisory Group. He was awarded an OBE for his services to diversity in education. He has written in the popular media advocating for greater visibility in the sciences for the

community. Additionally, Welton is a L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science male laureate of change, "''The time for men to realise that gender parity benefits everyone is long overdue"''.

Awards and honours

His awards and honours include: * 2017 Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) * 2017 Fellow of the City and Guilds Institute * 2016

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

Daniel Lecturer * 2015

175 Faces of Chemistry * 2012 RSC/UCL Thomas Graham Lecturer * 2012 Imperial College Rector's Award for Excellence in Teaching * 2011 DFG Paul Walden Lecturer * 2010 Honorary Member of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia * 2007 RSC Sir Christopher Ingold Lecturer * 2007 Fellow of the

* 2001

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...

New Voice in Chemistry * 1993

Tercentenary Fellowship

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Welton, Thomas 1964 births Living people Alumni of the University of Sussex Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry Academics of Imperial College London LGBT scientists from the United Kingdom Officers of the Order of the British Empire British chemists Gay academics