Professor Sylvia Draper

Prof. Sylvia Draper graduated in Chemistry from the University of Exeter (1:1) in 1988. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1991, working with Dr. C. Housecroft on 'Boron Butterfly Clusters'. Since 1993, after a short PD fellowship with Prof. D. Cardin, Sylvia has worked as a lecturer, fellow and now Professor in Inorganic and Synthetic Materials Chemistry in Trinity College Dublin. Sylvia'a career represents many firsts, the most current being her appointment as secretary to the Royal Irish Academy's (RIA) Mathematics and Physical Sciences Committee. She was the first Trinity recipient of both a Provost Teaching Award and a National Award for the Integration of Research Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL) in 2008. She is heavily engaged in student-led teaching and scholarship and has been nominated by students for the Provost's teaching award annually since its inception. She has held several senior management positions as Head of Discipline in Inorganic and Synthetic Materials from 2003-11 and as Head of the School of Chemistry from 2013-17. In 2017 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). This was in recognition of her contribution to the discipline and of her role as the sole Irish representative on the Society's Dalton Division Council and several of its award committees. She is currently the Irish Representative on the RSC Heads of Chemistry UK standing committee and the Chair of its local Irish section (the first female to hold this position). She is passionate about the public promotion of science (RTE 1 Pat Kenny, Sean O'Rourke, Newstalk) and continues to work closely with the Higher Education Authority (Leaving Certificate Assessment) and others, on matters of educational policy and outreach. She has a number of educational publications and is an active contributor to RTE Brain Storm, a platform for public engagement in science. A strong advocate for Trinity, Sylvia has been on a number of senior appointment, selection and review committees both internal and external to College. She is currently the Chair of the College Library and Information Policy Committee, a role which has involved her in furthering the strategic objectives of its library and IT academic support services. She is an active researcher, a founding member of CRANN and co-PI in AMBER 2 and an discipline expert and reviewer (recently concluding an 8 year stint on the European Research Council's starter and collaborator PE5 award panels). In 2018 Sylvia was awarded the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland's prestigious David Brown award 'in recognition of [her] outstanding contribution to inorganic chemistry both nationally and internationally. She also became the proud supervisor of the RIA's Chemistry Ph.D. graduate of the year. 2018 also saw her spear-head a successful Dublin bid to host the 47th Inorganic Coordination Chemistry Conference. This is one of the longest standing and most highly respected conferences in field of inorganic chemistry. In 2018 she was re-elected for a second 4 year term as a fellow's representative on the Board of the College. Sylvia sits of several College Boards including that of the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute. She has been an advocate for action in the area of gender, equality and diversity throughout her career. She Chairs the School of Chemistry's Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team and has been a vocal contributor to the College's Athena SWAN Committee through which she has been driving institutional change in this area.

  CATALYSTS   CHEMISTRY   CLUSTERS   COMPLEXES   COUPLING REACTIONS   CRYSTAL-STRUCTURES   FRAMEWORKS   HYDROGEN BONDING   Luminescent Materials   MOLECULAR-STRUCTURE   RAY CRYSTAL-STRUCTURE   REACTIVITY   RECEPTORS   RECOGNITION   REVERSE-TRANSCRIPTASE INHIBITORS   STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS   SURFACE ORGANOMETALLIC CHEMISTRY   SYSTEMS   THERMAL-DECOMPOSITION   TRANSITION-METAL   TYROSINE

I have worked for nearly three decades as a senior synthetic chemist specialising in functional molecular materials and their opto-electronic applications. Many of my research publications sit at the forefront of emerging fields and are testament to my collaboration with some leading research figures at home and abroad. The significance and quality of my national and international contribution to Inorganic Chemistry Research was marked by the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland's prestigious David Brown award in 2018. The body of work I have produced in supramolecular, bio-inorganic and materials chemistry underpins the outputs of several of Trinity's leading Research Centres and Institutes. These include conceptually new ideas e.g. methionine-baiting in the development of new palladium therapeutics (Centre for Chemical Synthesis and Chemical Biology), TRH-DE inhibitors (Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience), and the exploration of non-porphyrin NIR photosensitisers for application in Photodynamic Therapy (Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute). The underlying motivation for my research is the creation of synthetic routes to highly, sought after molecular and luminescent materials. This sustained interest arose from early investigations into alkynes as electronic linkers in metal clusters. The latter are precursors to polyaromatic and heteroaromatic compounds and led me to develop a pathway to, and hence a unique class, of electron-accepting planar molecules: the Nitrogen-heterosuperbenzenes. This pioneering work spawned a significant number of highlighted (Chem. Eng. News) and prestigious publications (JACS, Angew. Chemie., Chem. Commun.). In particular it served to ignite the heteroatom-nanographene world and stimulated new directions within the field of molecular materials including on-surface mediated graphene synthesis. My research is marked by >7M€ in direct research funding as PI, >80 journal publications (>50 since last promotion) with average IF >5. In 2015 while Head of School I was awarded one of only 13 of the nationally awarded SFI-PI research grants (>1M€) in science that year and remain one of a handful of TCD Chemists with SFI-PI funding. Significant research results are the synchrotron molecular structures of the founding members of the nitrogen heterosuperbenzene family, the use of large-surface ligands in photoresponsive, coordination compounds and a host of structurally versatile supramolecular and polymeric networks built-up from aromatic backbones. Recent Draper successes include the delivery and evaluation of molecular upconversion materials that exhibit the highest recorded singlet oxygen and upconversion quantum yields (using low density power sources). This work alone, initiated through the hosting SFI-Walton Professor (J. Zhou) from Dalian University of Technology has given rise to 10 Draper-led publications (including Angew. Chemie (x1) (IF 11.99), Chem. Comm. (x3) (IF 6.32), Chem. Eur J. (x1) (IF 5.32)), two front covers (Dalton Trans., ChemPhotoChem.) and one hot paper (J. Mater. Chem. C). In the last three years, as PI I have given 9 invited speaker presentations at international conferences (e.g. ISPPCC-2017, ICCC-2018). In addition members of my research team and I have been singled-out to receive a number of awards (2017 Royal Irish Academy Young Irish Chemist's Award (Junsi Wang for the best Chemistry Ph.D. thesis produced in 2017-18), RSC Materials poster awards (Yue Lu, Beijing 2016), School of Chemistry BOC gases PG award 2017). The impact of my research is internationally recognized, far-reaching and transformative. Its quality has ensured that my group remains at the forefront of cutting-edge developments (Non-Disclosure Filed Nov. 2018). It is driving new industrial processes and technologies (e.g. with Johnson Matthey, Henkel Global Ltd.). and fueling international collaborations in two-photon absorption applications.