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One of the really interesting and exciting things about chemistry
is when you put on reactions that don't quite work in the way you intended.
That can lead to new discoveries, new chemical reactions
that have not been observed before
and also lead to new fundamental understandings
of how reactions - how molecules - combine together.
Sometimes we put reactions on that don't work
and that makes us think about chemistry in a broader sense
and in trying to solve that problem, we'll pick areas,
we'll pick reactions or components
from other ends of the spectrum and try and solve that problem.
By doing so, we'll be putting together things
that we never planned to do at the outset
and that can, again, lead to completely new chemistries
and new discoveries and new avenues of research.
One of the things we're doing at the moment
is focusing on boron chemistry,
because boron is a fascinating element.
It can orchestrate a whole series of transformations
with fantastic fidelity and precision.
And we've discovered some new reactions of boron chemistry
that have led us into being able to make molecules
that were really very difficult in the past.
So this is an exciting area for us,
it's an area we've only been involved in
in the last five or so years,
but we've made some really exciting discoveries in that field.
In fact, just a couple of weeks ago,
I was opening the International Conference on Boron Chemistry
at Niagara Falls
and I was able to tell them all about exciting discoveries
that we've made here at Bristol.