19 Oct 2010
Prof Mike Page has won the Yorkshire and the Humber Group's first Research and Development for Society Award. Prof Page is Director of Innovative Physical Organic Solutions, University of Huddersfield, and is a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield.
His research interests cover how chemical reactions occur and medicinal chemistry, the mechanism of action of enzymes, drug design - inhibitors of enzymes of interest to disease states, the chemistry of β-lactam antibiotics and their derivatives, overcoming bacterial resistance to antibiotics and the use of enzymes in synthesis - enantioselective biotransformations.
Prof Page studied Chemistry at the (now) University of Brighton (1967) and took his PhD at the Universities of Leicester and Glasgow (1970). He has a DSc from the CNAA and from the University of Glasgow. He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow with Prof W P Jencks at the University of Brandeis (USA) (1970-72) and then Prof R P Bell at the University of Stirling (1972-73). He was then appointed lecturer at the (now) University of Huddersfield where he has been senior lecturer, principal lecturer, reader and then professor (1985). Prof Page was Head of the Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences from 1985 until 1997, and Dean of the School of Applied Sciences from 1989 to 2003.
He has been a member of BBSRC and EPSRC committees including biomolecular sciences, molecular recognition, chemistry and organic chemistry. He was Chairman of the Committee of Heads of Polytechnic Chemistry Departments and a member of the CNAA Chemistry Board. He was Chairman of the Royal Society of Chemistry Qualifications and Education Board and a member of its Council. He was a member of the HEFCE Research Assessment Exercise panel for Chemistry in 1992 and was a member of the HEFCE pilot teaching assessment of chemistry. He has been Chairman of the RSC Organic Reaction Mechanisms Group and a member of the Editorial Boards of Chemical Communications, Perkin 2, Biochemical Journal and J. Phys. Org. Chem.
Prof Page has published over 180 research papers, edited three books and co-author, with Andrew Williams, of Organic and BioOrganic Mechanisms. He was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry's 150th anniversary Perkin prize for the best research paper in 1991 and the Organic Reaction Mechanisms Prize in 2003.
In 2009 Prof Page was awarded £2.8m of ERDF funding to establish Innovative Physical Organic Solutions (IPOS) at the University of Huddersfield to provide high level analytical and R&D services to industry.
The award was bestowed before the Group's Nuclear Renaissance lecture on 10 November 2010.
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