Interview with Tony James.

Abstract

Tony D. James (born October 7th 1964) is a Professor at the University of Bath and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He completed his first degree in Chemistry in 1986 at the University of East Anglia. He then moved to the University of Victoria in 1986 to do his PhD under the supervision of Thomas M. Fyles. After finishing his PhD in 1991 he moved to Japan as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow where he worked at the Chemirecognics Project with Seiji Shinkai. In 1995 he returned to the UK as a Royal Society Research Fellow in the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, moving to the Department of Chemistry at the University of Bath in September 2000. He has been a visiting professor at Tsukuba, Osaka and Kyushu Universities and is a guest Professor at East China University of Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Shandong Normal University, Nanjing University and is a Hai-Tian (Sea-Sky) Scholar at Dalian University of Technology. In 2013 he was awarded a Daiwa Adrian Prize, which are awarded in recognition of significant scientific collaboration between British and Japanese research teams. His research interests include many aspects of supramolecular chemistry, including molecular recognition, molecular self-assembly and sensor design. Within the area of molecular recognition his research has a particular focus on boronic acid based receptors for the fluorescence sensing of saccharides. He has developed a broad interdisciplinary approach to research, with an underpinning focus on the development of modular sensors where he has pioneered a range of reporting regimes.