Anna Slater

Anna Grace Slater (née Phillips)^[1] is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Liverpool.

Slater studied chemistry at the University of Nottingham, where she graduated in 2006. Slater completed a Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham under the supervision of Neil Champness in 2011.^[1]

In 2013 Slater joined the group of Andy Cooper at the University of Liverpool, where she worked on porous organic cages.^[2] She is interested in supramolecular chemistry.^[3] In 2015 she published "Function-led Design of New Porous Materials" in Science.^[4] She was shortlisted in the 2016 Women of the Future awards in the science category.^[5][6]

In 2016 she was appointed an EPSRC Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow.^[7][8] She was appointed as a Royal Society University Research Fellow in 2021, senior lecturer in 2021/22 and to a personal chair in 2022.^[9][10][11]

She looks to develop new functional materials through continuous flow chemistry at the University of Liverpool.^[10] Her half-a-million pound grant, "High Throughput Materials Development in Continuous Flow", is supported by the Royal Society.^[11] She took part in the Sci Annual Review Meeting, talking about new concepts in organic synthesis.^[12]

Slater was co-chair of the UK Research Staff Association (UKRSA).^[13][14] Slater led a project looking at how researchers took maternity, paternity, adoption, and parental leave.^[15][16] In 2016 she discussed barriers to mothers from pursuing academia.^[17]

In 2017, Slater took an exhibit titled "No Assembly Required" to a special joint Royal Society/Science Museum "Lates", part of a series of events open to adult members of the public that typically attracts over 4000 people.^{[18][19][20][21]} As part of the exhibit, Slater worked with Senior Lecturer and science poet Sam Illingworth to produce a series of poems written by the visitors using language from scientific papers in the field.^[22][23]

She is an Associate Editor of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Molecular Systems Design & Engineering.^[24]

She is a former vice-chair, and a member of the advisory board, of WISC (Women in Supramolecular Chemistry), a group "supporting women and those who are marginalised to progress within supramolecular chemistry through creating a sense of community and kinship" and is one of the co-authors of the 2022 book Women in Supramolecular Chemistry: Collectively Crafting the Rhythms of Our Work and Lives in STEM (Policy Press: ISBN 978-1447362371).^[25][26][27]

Slater has two children, and has epilepsy.^[25] She was instrumental in setting up WISC's Disability/Chronic Illness/Neurodivergence Cluster and is "passionate about inclusion, diversity, and equity in HE [higher education]".^[27]

• Harrison-Meldola Memorial Award (2023)^[10]
• Two Royal Society Fellowships (DHF 2016, URF 2021)^[28]
• Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe (2020)^[28]
• Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society (2016)^[28]