Lee Cronin, Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, is a pioneer in digitizing chemistry. He unveils the revolutionary Chemputer, likening it to 3D printing for chemical synthesis, which promises to standardize lab practices. The discussion delves into applying digital methodologies to drug development, the challenges of creating pharmaceuticals locally, and the role of robotics in enhancing drug manufacturing. Cronin also shares insights on transitioning from academia to startups, emphasizing collaboration, adaptability, and the future of personalized medicine.
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insights INSIGHT
Digitizing Chemistry with Chemputer
Lee Cronin built the Chemputer as a 3D printer for chemistry to digitize chemical processes.
This approach enables reproducibility and systematic methodology in chemistry, which traditionally lacked it.
question_answer ANECDOTE
First Drug 3D Printed: Ibuprofen
Lee 3D printed ibuprofen using a modified RepRap 3D printer connected to pumps for precise chemical mixing.
This experiment successfully demonstrated drugs can be made with 3D printing despite initial disbelief.
insights INSIGHT
Four Fundamental Chemical Steps
Every chemical reaction involves four fundamental steps: reaction, workup, isolation, and purification.
Automating these steps ensures no process is skipped and enables complete programming of chemical synthesis.
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Lee Cronin is a true mad scientist. He’s a professor of chemistry in Glasgow, where he also founded Chemify. This is a company that has invented a new type of approach to accomplish chemistry, very analogous to using the tool chain that we use in computers and then adapting that to chemistry.
I think this analogy holds very tightly. He’s built this machine called a Chemputer, which is basically a 3D printer for chemistry. To make that work, he had to make a programming language for chemistry, a GitHub for chemistry. He basically had to rebuild the whole stack that we use in software, but for chemistry.
That’s very important because chemists are still acting in this kind of a dark ages, voodoo modality, where it’s very difficult for somebody in one chemistry lab to replicate what you did in another one.
This is going to really change the way that chemists work, because they’ll have very systematic and replicable approach to what they do.
Lee Cronin by Robert Ormerod
Lee is a legitimate professor. He’s the Regis Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. He’s graduating Ph.D’s in chemistry and they’re doing all kinds of amazing stuff, and I think in part because they’re stuck in remote Scotland, there’s just no adult supervision and these people are able to think freely and go do amazing stuff. On top of this, if you don’t know about Lee or some of the other things we don’t get into, I highly recommend you listen to his conversation with Lex Friedman on that podcast, which is also wonderful and goes deep.
Leroy “Lee” Cronin is the Regius Chair of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and appointed to the Regius Chair of Chemistry in 2013. He was previously the Gardiner Chair, appointed April 2009.
Cronin was awarded BSc (1994) and PhD (1997) from the University of York. From 1997 to 1999, he was a Leverhulme fellow at the University of Edinburgh working with Neil Robertson. From 1999-2000 he worked as an Alexander Von Humboldt research fellow in the laboratory of Achim Mueller at the University of Bielefeld (1999–2000). In 2000, he joined the University of Birmingham as a Lecturer in Chemistry, and in 2002 he moved to a similar position at the University of Glasgow.
In 2005, he was promoted to Reader at the University of Glasgow, EPSRC Advanced Fellow followed by promotion to Professor of Chemistry in 2006, and in 2009 became the Gardiner Professor. In 2013, he became the Regius Professor of Chemistry (Glasgow).
Cronin gave the opening lecture at TEDGlobal conference in 2011 in Edinburgh. He outlined the initial steps his team at University of Glasgow is taking to create inorganic biology, life composed of non-carbon-based material.
Deep Future 
