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Light-driven chemistry for a sustainable future

01 - 02 June 2026 09:00 - 17:00 The Royal Society Free Watch online
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Light driven Chemistry

Discussion meeting organised by Professor Anatoly Zayats, Professor Stefan Maier, Sir Richard Catlow FRS, Professor Graham Hutchings CBE FRS.

Increasing demands on clean energy and a sustainable environment require a paradigm shift in catalysis and chemical industries to reduce energy consumption and the use of rare materials. Photonics offers new emerging solutions to control chemical processes with light. This meeting will bring together researchers across the disciplines of chemistry and optical physics to chart emerging routes for light-driven catalysis.

Poster session

There will be a poster session from 5pm on Monday 1 June 2026. If you would like to present a poster, please submit your proposed title, abstract (up to 200 words), author list, and the name of the proposed presenter and institution no later than Friday 27 March 2026.

Attending the event

This event is intended for researchers in relevant fields.

  • Free to attend
  • Both virtual and in-person attendance is available. Advance registration is essential
  • Lunch is available on both days of the meeting for an optional £25 per day. There are plenty of places to eat nearby if you would prefer to purchase food offsite. Participants are welcome to bring their own lunch to the meeting

Enquiries: Scientific Programmes team.

Organisers

  • Professor Anatoly Zayats, King's College London, UK

    Professor Anatoly Zayats, King's College London, UK

    Professor Anatoly V. Zayats is the head of the Experimental Biophysics and Nanotechnology Group at the Department of Physics, King’s College London, where he also leads Nano-optics and Near-field Spectroscopy Laboratory. He graduated and received PhD in Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. His current research interests are in the areas of nano-optics, scanning probe microscopy, nanophotonics and plasmonics, metamaterials, nonlinear optics and spectroscopy, surface plasmons and polaritons, and optical properties of surfaces, thin films, semiconductors and low-dimensional structures. He is a holder of the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Optical Society of America, SPIE and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
  • Sir Richard Catlow FRS, University College London, UK

    Sir Richard Catlow FRS

    Richard began his career at Oxford University and has directed the Davy-Faraday Laboratory at the Royal Institute in London. He has been a Professor at University College London, University of Keele, the University of Cardiff, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society - the UK Academy of Science - and a member of the German National Science Academy, the Leopoldina, of the Academia Europaea and the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS); he is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Chemistry and of the Materials and Chemical Societies of India. He served as Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society from 2016 – 2021 and was knighted in 2000 for his services to leadership in science and research.

    His research programme is based on the development and application of computational techniques used in direct conjunction with experiment in probing the properties of complex materials. He has played a leading role in developing the field both in the UK and internationally. His programme comprises the study of energy materials, catalysis, nano-chemistry and surface chemistry. His work has also exploited the synergy between computation and experiment using synchroton radiation and neutron scattering methods, especially in catalytic science. He has published over 1,200 research papers.

  • Professor Graham Hutchings CBE FRS, Cardiff University, UK

    Graham Hutchings, born 1951, studied chemistry at University College London. His early career was with ICI and AECI Ltd where he became interested in heterogeneous catalysis initially with oxides and subsequently with gold catalysis. In 1984 he moved to academia and has held chairs at the Universities of Witwatersrand, Liverpool and Cardiff and currently he is Director of the Cardiff Catalysis Institute. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2009, and he was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 2013.

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