On the 12th and 13th October 2022 was held the CHAIR Oktober Flow Fest! 2 days of seminars on Flow Chemistry by renowned researchers from across Europe.

Day 1

The meeting was kicked-off with an introduction by Prof. Timothy Noël, who presented our consortium and our aim to train 15 young chemists to the audience. Dr Anna Slater from the University of Liverpool then took the stage to present her research on tools for the discovery and optimisation of complex chemical systems. For the second half of the session, Dr Benjamin Martin, Continuous Manufacturing Network Leader from Novartis Basel brought an industrial perspective on Sustainable process R&D enabled by continuous manufacturing.

After a group lunch break, Prof. Renzo Luisi from the University of Bari presented his group’s work, focused on using flow chemistry as enabling technology for exploring new chemical space and developing sustainable synthetic tactics. Prof. Timothy Noël then took the stage to present his research – including the work from CHAIR ESR11 Antonio Pulcinella. Finally, the session was ended with a presentation from Dr. Hannes Gemoets, CTO of Creaflow, on the flow reactors and their use for scalable photo- and electrochemistry.

The day was concluded by a visit of the Noël Research Group Laboratory.

Day 2

Day 2 started with a talk by Prof. Richard Bourne from the University of Leeds on self-optimisation in Flow Chemistry, followed by another industrial presentation by Dr. Alexander Jones from Janssen Pharmaceutica, on Flow Chemistry Automation and Applications to Drug Discovery.

After lunch, Dr. Arnab Chaudhuri from the University of Eindhoven presented his postdoctoral research with a talk entitled Intensified Processes using the Rotor-Stator Spinning Disc Reactor. The afternoon was closed with Noël Group’s own PhD student Aiden Slattery, on his project: RoboChem, an automated platform for the optimization of photocatalytic transformations.

The Oktober Flow Fest was overall a great success! Congratulations to the organisers Tim Noël and Antonio Pulcinella!