Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - 11:00am

 

 

Abstract: We are entering the era of Digital-Chemistry whereby computer control can be used to monitor reactions, calculate reactivity and predict routes to targets but what next? In this talk I will explain how a programmable chemical computer or ‘chemputer’ can be used to do organic synthesis reactions making the process of chemical synthesis, safer, cheaper, more reliable, and freeing the chemist to focus on the more interesting aspects of synthesis, exploring for new reactivity and reactions – enabled by letting computers programme chemistry. In the second part of the talk I will explain how chemicals might be used to do computations. By designing a programmable chemical computer, I will describe how we were able to build and demonstrate a prototype chemical processing unit. Finally, the use of chemical computing to help search chemical space, explore large problems, and define a new roadmap for chemical computing that will aim to realise the dream of computing not just with molecules, but with reactions.

 

Speaker: 

Lee Cronin

Institution: 

University of Glasgow