The 72nd Hatfield Memorial Lecture

Life and death at the nanoscale – Why small things matter and how we can control nanomaterial behaviour for healthcare and the environment 

Speaker: Professor Mary Ryan

Abstract

‘The principles of physics…do not speak against the possibility of manoeuvring things atom by atom…it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big.’  So said Richard Feynman in his famous ‘Plenty of Room at the Bottom’ talk in 1959.  A lot has changed since then, nanomaterials are produced routinely, and we can indeed move atoms one by one. We can also now image complex materials at the atomic scale within increasingly complex environments. These new tools allow us to develop engineered nanomaterials by design.

 Nanomaterials offer significant opportunities for society, with novel properties and enhanced function, but they also come with risk to human and environmental health. In this talk we will explore this dichotomy, and the ways in which we can develop safe functional nanomaterials for enhanced biosensing, novel therapeutics, catalysis and environmental cleanup.

Biography

Professor Mary Ryan is currently the Vice Provost for Research and Enterprise and the Armourers and Brasiers' Chair for Materials Science.

Mary leads a large interdisciplinary group focused on understanding nanoscale materials, and nanoscale interfaces in and between materials and their environments. She has a particular interest in the development of operando approaches and has pioneered nanoscale methods in synchrotron science.

Her research on nanoscale materials and interfaces spans diverse application areas including: energy materials (batteries, magnetocaloric cooling devices, photovoltaics, fuel cells and catalysis); nanomaterials for bio-sensors and therapies; the mechanisms that lead to human and environmental toxicity associated with nanostructures, and the potential of nanomaterials for environmental remediation (in particular for nuclear waste). A key aspect of this work is understanding the reactivity and stability of nanostructures in operando in order to maximize efficiency and lifetime of devices and systems.

She was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2015 and is a Fellow IoM3 and of the Institute of Corrosion. She was awarded CBE for contributions to Materials Science in the 2022 Queen's Birthday honours.