My name is
Professor Varinder Aggarwal,
I'm Professor of Organic Chemistry,
and I teach organic chemistry
at the undergraduate level.
I run a team of postgraduates
and postdoctoral workers
in synthetic organic chemistry.
So every day, I will come into the lab
and speak with my team
and see how things are going,
see what experiments they've done,
what successes they've had
and what problems they've had.
Together we'll try and come up
with some solutions to those problems
that they've encountered.
I'll also spend part of my day
trying to write up
those experiments
and prepare publications
and that's an important part
of what we do so we can tell the world
about some of the
achievements we've made.
I work with
a large international team
of students and postdocs
from all over the world.
We basically work on organic synthesis
which is all about making complicated
molecules, complex structures,
with precise shape and functionality
from simple building blocks.
What we do is we put
these building blocks together
and then activate them in some way
so that they are
attracted to each other
and when they're attracted to each
other, bonds can form between them
and then we take that
and then we do it again,
add another building block and so on.
It's a bit like trying to construct
the Taj Mahal - it's got minarets
and domes and facades and courtyards.
And our goal is to try
and make those molecules
in as short a number of steps
as possible
because that uses up less resources,
creates less waste
and is much more efficient.
Outside the lab, a lot of people
are interested in creating molecules
with precise shape and functionality.
The whole pharmaceutical industry,
the whole agrochemical industry
is based on that.
They have to target enzymes
and find molecules
that will interact with enzymes
to stop bad processes happening
or to kick-start processes
that are not happening.
We provide them the tools
that enable them to go away
and create those molecules
and without those tools,
we would not have the industries
that we have today - we wouldn't have
the healthcare that we have today,
we wouldn't have
the agrochemical industry -
that's helping to feed the world -
that we have today.
