The Cronin Group

Research in the Digital Chemistry group is motivated by the fascination for complex chemical systems, and the desire to construct complex functional molecular architectures that are not based on biologically derived building blocks.


Latest News

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May 2023: Assembly Theory features in Quanta Magazine

Assembly theory, developed by researchers in the Cronin group and at Arizona State University, has featured in Quanta magazine, an online magazine that describes itself as an “editorially independent online publication launched by the Simons Foundation in 2012 to enhance public understanding of science”. The article, written by Philip Ball, describes assembly theory as a potential way to understand how life came to be, and to detect life on other worlds that may be entirely dissimilar to our own.

The full article can be read online on the Quanta Magazine website.

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April 2023: Lee Cronin presents ‘Foundations of Chemputation’ at Solvay Institute meeting

Lee Cronin has presented a talk at the Solvay Institute, a research institute based in Brussels with a mission to “support and develop curiosity-driven research in physics, chemistry and allied fields with the purpose of ‘enlarging and deepening the understanding of natural phenomena.'”

Prof Cronin’s talk, entitled “Foundations of Digital Chemistry – Chemputation” explored the development of ground-breaking robotic Chemputation technology for digitizing chemistry, and was part of a meeting on “New Ways to do Chemistry, Emerging Technologies for …

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March 2023: Congratulations to Silke Asche on Completing her PhD

Congratulations to Silke Asche on passing her PhD Viva, as the 77th doctor created in the Cronin Group.

Silke also won first place in the #RSCDigital theme of the recent RSC Twitter competition (see her entry here) so congratulations to Silke on her multiple achievements.

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February 2023: Cronin Group Members Take Part in RSC Twitter Poster Conference

Researchers from the Cronin Group have taken part in the 2023 #RSCPoster Twitter Conference. The 24 hour event, held annually, allows researchers across the world to share their research without the expense or ecological impact associated with attending a conventional conference.

Five researchers in the group tweeted posters, and answered a number of interesting questions about their work. Use the following links to view the posters and join in the conversations.

https://twitter.com/SilkeAsche/status/1630541113252519940

https://twitter.com/jacopo_zero/status/1630542754886434819 …

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January 2023: Assembly Theory Features in Scientific American

Assembly theory - a theory being developed by the Cronin group along with international collaborators - has been featured in the February 2023 edition of Scientific American. The article, “Life as We Don’t Know It”, explores how living systems on other worlds could work in very different ways from life on Earth. Assembly theory has been developed to distinguish living from non-living systems based on their complexity, and is agnostic to the specific molecules and structures involved, and so could be used to identify life in completely unfamiliar contexts.

The article can be …

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December 2022: Molecular Assembly Website Goes Live

A beta version of a new Molecular Assembly website has now gone live. Developed by researchers as the University of Glasgow and Arizona State University, the website allows users to query and investigate a database of molecular assembly (MA) indices for molecules, with upcoming functionality for live MA calculations. Molecular Assembly is an application of Assembly Theory, which is a novel theoretical framework developed to characterize the information required to build objects, and has applications in detecting alien life and searching chemical space for drug candidates.

Try out the website …

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November 2022: Chemify featured as Falling Walls venture winner 2022

Chemify, the University of Glasgow spin-out company headed by Lee Cronin, has been featured as a 2022 Venture Winner in Falling Walls, which describes itself as “the unique global hub connecting science, business and society”. Chemify is acknowledged for its mission to convert code to molecules and molecules to code for search, discovery, optimization and production, and to invent new molecules with desired properties.

For more details see the Falling Walls website.

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October 2022: Dr. Nicola Bell awarded EPSRC Fellowship

Congratulations to Research Coordinator Dr Nicola Bell who has been awarded an EPSRC Open Fellowship and Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Fellowship to start in the School of Chemistry in January 2023. In her fellowship Nicola will combine automation tools with inert atmosphere chemistry and collaborate with Sellafield Nuclear site to develop remote handling systems for the nuclear industry. While we’re sad to lose Nicola from the Cronin labs we look forward to seeing the work of the Bell group.

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September 2022: Yibin Jiang wins poster prize at functional materials symposium

Congratulations to Cronin Group PhD Student Yibin Jiang, who has won a poster prize at the Leverhulme Research Centre for Functional Materials Design 2nd Biennial Symposium in Liverpool. His poster, entitled “An Artificial Intelligence Enabled Chemical Synthesis Robot for Exploration and Optimisation of Nanomaterials” won a prize in the Intelligent Automation category.

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August 2022: Times Higher Education: Radical critical openness is the key to a flourishing research culture

In an article written for Times Higher Education, Prof Cronin has described his philosophy and methods for creating a positive research culture. In the article, entitled “Radical critical openness is the key to a flourishing research culture”, he describes the top ten tips that have worked for his group over the years, including encouraging openness, effective mentoring, constructive feedback and flexible working hours.

The full article can be found on the Times Higher Education website

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August 2022: Lee Cronin appears on mendelspod podcast

Lee Cronin has appeared on the mendelspod podcast, a life sciences podcast which aims to “create a space for probing conversations and deep insight into the topics and trends which shape the industry’s future and therefore our future as a species”. In the podcast, he discusses the implications and applications of assembly theory and his group’s work on chemputers.

The full podcast can be found on the mendelspod website.

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July 2022: Cronin group automated validation of chemical synthesis literature published in Science

Cronin group research into the automated validation of chemical synthesis literature has been published in Science. In the paper, entitled “Digitization and validation of a chemical synthesis literature database in the ChemPU”, researchers generated a database of chemical reactions, including the XDL code required to run the reactions on robotic platforms. More than 50 of these entries were downloaded and run successfully on modular chemputers, and an open database was set up for the addition of new reactions. This work showcases a major step towards the digitization of chemistry.

The full …

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Prof. Leroy (Lee) Cronin

Prof Leroy (Lee) Cronin
Regius Chair of Chemistry
Advanced Research Centre (ARC)
Level 5, Digital Chemistry
University of Glasgow
11 Chapel Lane
Glasgow G11 6EW
Tel: +44 141 330 6650
Email: lee.cronin@glasgow.ac.uk

Latest Publications

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480. Automated Library Generation and Serendipity Quantification Enables Diverse Discovery in Coordination Chemistry

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479. Water-soluble Self-assembled {Pd84}Ac Polyoxopalladate Nano-wheel as a Supramolecular Host

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478. A synergistic {Cu2-W12O40} catalyst with high conversion for homo-coupling of terminal alkynes

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477. Measuring optical activity with unpolarized light: Ghost polarimetry

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476. An artificial intelligence enabled chemical synthesis robot for exploration and optimization of nanomaterials

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475. An autonomous portable platform for universal chemical synthesis

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474. Robotic synthesis of peptides containing metal-oxide-based amino acids

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473. Selection of assembly complexity in a space of tetrapeptides

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472. Digitization and validation of a chemical synthesis literature database in the ChemPU

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471. Formalising the pathways of life to using assembly spaces

Group Funders

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