Professor William J Kerr

Billy Kerr was born in Glasgow and raised in the district of Drumchapel, a quaint fishing village on the banks of the Clyde.

His undergraduate studies were undertaken at the University of Strathclyde, where he gained a 1st Class Honours degree in Chemistry in 1983.  He then remained at Strathclyde to study towards a PhD with Professor Peter Pauson and Dr David Billington; he gained his PhD in 1986.

From 1986-1988 Billy was engaged as a NIH Postdoctoral Research Associate in the laboratory of Professor Myron Rosenblum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA and in 1988 he returned to the UK and joined Professor Steven Ley at Imperial College, London, as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant.

In 1989 Billy returned to Strathclyde to take up a Lectureship position in Organic Chemistry, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1997, and in 2002 to a Professorial Chair in Organic Chemistry.

His research interests cover a broad range of metal-mediated synthetic organic chemistry and, in particular, in the development of new preparative techniques, the creation of asymmetric processes, and the use of these emerging methods in total synthesis programmes.

In 1991 Billy was named as an ICI Fine Chemicals Young Lecturer and in 1997 he was awarded the Glaxo Wellcome Prize for Innovative Organic Chemistry.

In 2005 Billy was Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Lodz, Poland.

In addition, he is currently appointed (October 2006 - September 2010) as the External Examiner at Queen's University Belfast, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering for the courses of BSc in Chemistry, BSc in Medicinal Chemistry, and MSci in Chemistry.