Professor David Littlejohn

Professor David Littlejohn studied at the University of Strathclyde gaining a 1st Class BSc honours degree in Chemistry in 1975 and a PhD in Analytical Chemistry in 1978.

Following a period working at ICI, he returned to Strathclyde as the Pye Foundation Lecturer in 1981. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer and then appointed to the Philips Chair in Analytical Chemistry in 1988. He became Head of Department in 2005.

Professor Littlejohn was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1991 and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1998.

Professor Littlejohn's research covers a broad range of analytical chemistry topics, including atomic spectrometry, chromatography, environmental analytical chemistry, conservation science and process analysis.

His activities in the development and application of in-line, on-line and non-invasive methods of process monitoring cover a range of techniques and data analysis methods, including NIR, MIR, and Raman spectrometries, acoustic techniques, NMR spectrometry and mass spectrometry.

In 1997, he co-founded the Centre of Process Analytics and Control Technology (CPACT (external link)), which is a multi-disciplinary consortium of universities, end-user companies and technology vendors. 

As a result of his research activities, Professor Littlejohn has received four awards, including three from the Royal Society of Chemistry. He also receives regular invitations to speak at conferences in the UK and abroad.

Over the past 10 years Professor Littlejohn has been PI on EPSRC grants totalling £3.5 M. Through CPACT, he has helped secured over £0.5 M in direct industrial funding. 

Professor Littlejohn has served on the Membership, Fellowship, and Accreditation Committees of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

He has been external examiner at many universities in the UK and Europe, sat on professorial appointment boards, served on the editorial advisory boards of international journals, and acted as a reviewer of grant applications for research councils in Canada, the USA, and the Netherlands, as well as in the UK.

He has been invited to serve on the scientific programme and organizing committees of several analytical chemistry conferences.

In 2001, through CPACT he co-founded a new international conference, Advances in Process Analytics and Control Technologies (APACT (external link)), which takes place annually.

The success of APACT has resulted in a joint venture between CPACT and the German Chemical Society to begin a new triennial pan-European conference on process analysis and control, starting in 2008 in Frankfurt. 

Professor Littlejohn teaches atomic spectrometry, chromatography, process analysis, and XRF spectrometry to undergraduate students and has wide experience in MSc teaching.

Over the past 10 years he has been responsible for several multi-media teaching initiatives in conjunction with colleagues in the Chemistry department and the university's Learning Services department, including web-based learning support material for laboratory teaching and lecture courses in forensic and analytical chemistry.