From the Big Bang to your plate: astronomy and chemistry hidden in our day-to-day lives

Catalysis is a key technology for modern society, leading to lower product costs, less energy consumption and less pollution - you might not realise it, but we all benefit from catalysis every single day! In this talk, I’ll illustrate the importance of catalysis in our day-to-day by dissecting a typical pub dinner and discussing where catalysis has been used. Furthermore, I’ll discuss how future catalysts are being designed and tested without even needing to go in the laboratory, through the use of computational simulation on some of the world’s biggest computers.

In this talk I will expose the secret origins of the everyday objects that fill our lives. From the Big Bang, via lonely cosmic rays, to exploding stars: the atoms that make up each object have a story to tell.  Join us as we take a whistle-stop tour through the universe, and never look at your wrist watch in the same way again…