Catalysis is a core area of contemporary science posing major fundamental and conceptual challenges, while being at the heart of the chemical industry.

Catalysis for fuels is a major theme in chemical sciences and engineering that underlies much of the key research and teaching in these subjects. It therefore presents a unifying theme around which one can bring the whole community together to act with one purpose. We will explore the modern methods being used to design and investigate new catalysts associated with energy provision. This will involve new theoretical approaches to complex catalysis; designing new catalysts for the synthesis of synthetic fuels; the design of new photocatalytic systems and how the approaches can bridge across the disciplines of physical sciences and chemical engineering.

The Faraday Division have been organising high impact Faraday Discussions in rapidly developing areas of physical chemistry and its interfaces with other scientific disciplines for over 100 years. Faraday Discussions have a special format where research papers written by the speakers are distributed to all participants before the meeting, and most of the meeting is devoted to discussing the papers. Everyone contributes to the discussion - including presenting their own relevant research. The research papers and a record of the discussion are published in the journal Faraday Discussions.