The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (Iupac) is starting the new year with a new president.
On 1 January 2026, Mary Garson, professor emerita of chemistry at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, took over the reins from Ehud Keinan at the Israel Institute of Technology and president of the Israel Chemical Society.
UK-born Garson, who was previously vice-president of Iupac, is an organic chemist specialising in the chemistry and natural bioactivity of secondary metabolites from both marine and terrestrial environments. In 2000, a new species of marine flatworm was named Maritigrella marygarsonae in recognition of her contribution to the field.
Garson is also well-known as the creator of a global networking breakfast for female chemists, first held in 2011 to celebrate the International Year of Chemistry, which has since been rebranded as the Iupac Global Women’s Breakfast event. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and in 2014 was named one of its 175 Faces of Chemistry.
As president of Iupac, for the next two years Garson will be the administrative head of the organisation and responsible for chairing meetings of the council and executive board. She will also report on the state of the union at each biennial meeting of the council.
Keinan will now become past president of Iupac and remain an officer and member of the executive board for two years while the current past president, Javier García-Martínez – an inorganic chemist and director of the Molecular Nanotechnology Laboratory at the University of Alicante, Spain – will retire.
The secretary general of Iupac, Zoltán Mester, an analytical chemist at National Research Council Canada, was elected by the Iupac council in August 2023 for a four-year term and will continue in the role this year.
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