Joe Sweeney

Joe was a first-in-family to university, reading Chemistry at Imperial College, before completing a DPhil (PhD) in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Oxford, working with Prof. Sir Jack Baldwin, FRS. He then started his professional career as a Royal Society Fellow at the ETH Zürich, before returning to the UK to become a lecturer at the University of Leicester. He then worked at the Universities of Bristol (as lecturer) and Reading (becoming Professor in 2007), before moving to take up a research chair at University of Huddersfield in 2011. In 2018 he took up a chair at Lancaster University, where he was head of Chemistry, and co-chair of the EDI Strategy Group of the faculty of Science and Technology. He was appointed as the Dean of the Faculty of Science, Engineering, and Environment at the University of Salford in July 2021, before moving to become Associate Pro-Vic-Chancellor for Education in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Liverpool in 2023.

Joe is an experienced teacher, and has carried out research in a broad range of areas, including catalysis, enantioselective synthesis, medicinal chemistry (working on new chemical matter for treating motor neurone disease, and novel nucleotide analogues), and chemical imaging; he has worked extensively with industry (most recently on UKRI-funded collaborations focused on sustainability and contemporary recycling technologies) and has published more than 100 outputs in internationally renowned peer-reviewed journals (including Nature Chemistry, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Angewandte Chemie). Throughout his career Joe has worked with a range of stakeholders and third sector partners. He founded and chairs the Royal Society’s Industry Fellows College, and has been a member of a range of government committees (most recently with the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy – BEIS).

Joe is passionately committed to enabling people from all walks of life, from any background to change their lives through education; education is the only thing guaranteed to make a person’s life better, and he works tirelessly to help others gain the benefits which education has brought to him.