Andrew Livingston elected to the Royal Society

ANDREW LIVINGSTON, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Queen Mary University of London, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Livingston, who is a Fellow of IChemE, was elected in recognition of achievements in chemical engineering. He heads a research group of 20 PhD students and postdocs, with interests in membranes for molecular separations in liquids and the development of chemical processes using membranes. In 2018, he co-founded Exactmer, which uses sieving technology to produce polymers in liquid phase for use in pharmaceuticals, overcoming the poor scaling capabilities of solid-state synthesis.

Livingston said: “I am enormously proud to be elected a Fellow of this historic and esteemed institution. It is a great honour for both myself and Queen Mary. I would like to thank the Council of the Royal Society for considering me for such a recognition. I have been lucky to work with so many talented colleagues during my career, whose help and support along the way has been instrumental in my research and in advancing chemical engineering, and of course in receiving this recognition.

“I am excited about and looking forward to contributing to the work of the Royal Society, and demonstrating the benefits that science can make to the world around us.”

The Royal Society was founded in the 1660s and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. It promotes and supports excellence in science, and encourages its development for the benefit of humanity.

IChemE awarded Livingston the Junior Moulton Medal in 1993 in recognition of his published research, and the Underwood Medal in 2016 for his sustained contribution to research in the area of separations.

Livingston is from Taranaki in New Zealand, and studied chemical engineering at University of Canterbury. He has had a long affiliation with the chemical engineering department at Imperial College London dating back to the 1990s. Livingston would go on to work as Head of Department from 2008 until 2016. He left Imperial at the end of 2019 to join Queen Mary University of London where he also works as its Vice-Principal for Research and Innovation.

In 1996, he founded Membrane Extraction Technology, a spin-out company which manufactured solvent stable organic solvent nanofiltration membranes for molecular separations in organic liquids, which was bought by Evonik in 2010.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2006.