Rate My Professor Charlotte Williams

Professor Charlotte Williams is the Statutory Chair in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, appointed in 2024. She holds the position of Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and serves as Associate Head of Department (Research) in the Department of Chemistry. An EPSRC Established Career Research Fellow, Williams leads the Williams Research Group, focusing on sustainable chemistry. She earned her BSc and PhD from Imperial College London, where her doctoral work on ethene polymerisation catalysis was supervised by Vernon Gibson FRS and Nick Long. Following her PhD, she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota (2001–2002) with Bill Tolman and Marc Hillmyer on zinc catalysts for lactide polymerisation, and at the University of Cambridge (2002–2003) with Andrew Holmes FRS and Richard Friend FRS on organometallic polymers for electronics. From 2003 to 2016, she was an academic at Imperial College London, heading Inorganic Chemistry teaching and Materials Chemistry. Since joining Oxford in 2016, she has been a Tutorial Fellow and then Professorial Fellow in Chemistry at Trinity College until 2024, and now holds an Honorary Fellowship there. In 2011, she founded Econic Technologies, where she serves as a director and board member, commercialising catalysts for carbon dioxide utilisation.

Williams' research develops sustainable technologies for polymer production and carbon dioxide usage, creating highly active catalysts that convert renewable resources and wastes into recyclable, high-performance polymers for plastics, elastics, adhesives, coatings, and batteries. Key advances include bimetallic synergistic catalysts for low-pressure CO2 copolymerisations, switchable catalysis using monomer mixtures for polyesters, polycarbonates, and polyethers, and iso-selective lactide ring-opening polymerisation. She directs the £11 million EPSRC Sustainable Chemicals and Materials Manufacturing Hub (SCHEMA, 2024–2031) and the £12.5 million UK Catalysis Hub III (launched 2025), partnering with universities, industries, and policymakers for net-zero manufacturing. Her impact includes policy contributions to Royal Society briefings on defossilising the chemical industry and circular plastics economies. Notable publications are 'Sustainable polymers from renewable resources' (Nature, 2016), 'The technological and economic prospects for CO2 utilization and removal' (Nature, 2019), and 'The path forward for biofuels and biomaterials' (Science, 2006). Awards include Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS, 2021), OBE for services to chemistry (2020), Royal Society Leverhulme Medal (2022), RSC Tilden Prize (2021), and Frontiers Award (2025).