Profile

I enjoyed every subject at school but had a talent for STEM subjects. Despite it being my worst science at school, chemistry was my favourite as I was really into understanding materials and solids.

I studied at the University of Glasgow for both my degree and doctorate in chemistry (catalytic chemistry) giving me a taste for industrial processes. After my PhD, I moved into industry with Johnson Matthey in the North East of England.

I’m currently working on measuring powder properties and using the measurements as a basis for designing and selecting industrial handling equipment.

My team puts focus on a process called spray drying (which is about making sprays and drying the fine droplets to produce powders). This can mean working on very small scales myself (barely visible – e.g. studying rates of drying of single droplets) all the way up to how that drying rate affects how well a process works at a multi-metre pilot-scale. This also means working with a wide range of other people on things at high temperatures, high pressures, with toxic gases and also of personal protective equipment.

In the recent past, I worked on how to safely and reliably improve the scale-up of lab-based experiments and processes to pilot-scale (think of going from equipment that fits on bench-tops to equipment that can barely fit within rooms).

In the past I have also done in-depth work on materials called zeolites (derived from the Latin for boiling stone (zeo-lithos) because of the amount of water they can hold and visible amounts of steam are given off from them when heated) . They are very holey/porous solids that act as both sieves and sponges/adsorbents. They can be natural or man-made and can be used in cement, food, catalytic converters and gas purifiers, fossil fuel production, gas separation,  nuclear clean-up, water detergents and water purifiers. Without them, the world would not be as it is today.

Picture of zeolites – faujasite and philipsite from www.zeolite-collection.eu.

The holey/porous structure of faujasite (if you zoomed in to the atomic level) from http://www.explainthatstuff.com/zeolites.html

I never really have the same day twice because of the wide range of things I work on and because the work is long-term (usually spread over months and years) for all the different parts of Johnson Matthey. On a given day I might have some combination of:

• background reading (for example: academic articles, patents and previous reports on the work)
• safety assessments as I can be handling some very dangerous materials (toxic solids, liquids and gases) or working with hazardous conditions (high temperatures and pressures).
• Equipment use and maintenance – I work with dozens of different pieces of equipment at lab and pilot-scale (the size before industrial scale) for a wide range of chemistries = organic and inorganic as well as using physical chemistry to understand the processes.
• Analysis and characterisation of materials (e.g. elemental analysis, spectroscopy)
• Troubeshooting within my fields of expertise
• Project proposals
• University engagement to learn more
• Other – interviews, training, STEM activities, volunteering