The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Prizes portfolio is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the world, recognising achievements by individuals, teams and organisations in advancing the chemical sciences.

This year Professor Varinder Aggarwal was named as winner of the individual Pedler Prize, while three projects involving University of Bristol researchers won Horizon prizes. These include a study into aerosol particles which helped inform Government policy during the Covid-19 pandemic, the development of a handheld device that helps to save lives by detecting dangerous synthetic drugs, and an innovation to enhance crop growth.

Professor Aggarwal won the Pedler Prize for insight and creativity to deliver concise and efficient strategies for the assembly of complex organic molecules, and receives £3,000 and a medal. 

Professor Aggarwal has developed new chemical methods to assemble complex, biologically important molecules. His research includes new ways of speeding up, or catalysing chemical reactions, developing new classes of reagents for iterative synthesis, and applications of these methods in medicine, such as helping to provide more effective routes to potential vaccines against tuberculosis.

Professor Aggarwal said: “I was thrilled and delighted to receive this prize on behalf of my research group. To join the list of illustrious past winners is truly humbling, since many of them have been my heroes in chemistry. The prize belongs very much to my current and past research group, who have contributed so much to the development of our varied research programmes.” 

Elsewhere there was recognition for successful projects, including the PERFORM COVID-19 team which involved physical chemists, life scientists and clinicians from Bristol and London, who were able to advance our understanding of the properties of exhaled aerosols, and their impact on transmissibility of respiratory pathogens.

The PERFORM team measured the amount of aerosol generated when we sing, exercise and play musical instruments and the particle sizes exhaled, informing UK government policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

After the project received an RSC Faraday Horizon Prize, Professor Jonathan Reid, Professor of Chemistry, said: “As the principal investigator on this project, it is so gratifying that the whole team has received recognition for the work that we did. 

"It was so challenging to do this work during the highly pressurised early days of the pandemic when we still didn’t fully understand the transmission mechanism of COVID-19. It was thrilling to work with such a dedicated and multidisciplinary team." 

Another recipient of an RSC Horizon Prize was Team Harm Reduction, a project led by the University of Bath and involving University of Bristol researchers which developed a revolutionary handheld device that helps to save lives by detecting dangerous synthetic drugs almost instantly.

The groundbreaking devices are already being deployed across UK police forces and prisons, where staff use them to rapidly identify dangerous drugs and alert communities about life-threatening substances circulating locally.

Dr Jenny Scott, Senior Lecturer in Bristol Medical School, who explored real-world implementation of the device, said: "The illicit drug market is completely unregulated which means there's no quality control or safe processes in manufacturing. This means people who use drugs face all sorts of threats from toxic substances and variability in dose in the drug supply. Point-of-care testing of drug substances is important to give temporal information that can inform decision making in the moment, whether that decision is being made by healthcare staff, prison staff or people who use drugs themselves."

University of Bristol researchers were also members of the BoostCrop team which won an RSC Horizon Prize for the development of a library of biocompatible molecules that can harness solar UV energy to enhance crop growth.

Dr Helen Pain, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said: “By working together across borders and disciplines, chemists are finding solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Our prize winners come from a vast array of backgrounds, all contributing in different ways to our knowledge base, and bringing fresh ideas and innovations. Their passion, dedication and brilliance are an inspiration. I extend my warmest congratulations to them all.”