Profile

I’ve lived in Bristol since I stared University here in 2012 and loved the city so much I didn’t want to leave so stayed to do my PhD here too! I live with two flatmates who are also doing PhDs in Chemistry.

I’ve always been a really creative person and I love making things (not just molecules!). In my spare time I like to knit, sew, bake and to be honest do anything crafty! I also really enjoy practicing yoga – especially after a long day in the lab.

My favourite food is pizza (I once ate pizza every day for a week – and didn’t get bored of it!) and I’ve made it my ambition to try every pizza in Bristol!

I’m a photochemist, which means I use light to make chemical reactions happen. Photosynthesis is not the only chemical reaction that needs light in order to occur but it is a great example of how amazing plants are! Making reactions happen with light isn’t easy and we still have a lot to learn from nature.

Molecules and particularly the electrons in those molecules have energy. When light (a form of energy) is shone onto molecules, the energy can be transferred to those molecules. This allows them to react with other molecules in ways that they wouldn’t be able to do if they didn’t have the extra energy!

In my work, I try to use these weird and wonderful photochemical reactions to make compounds that have complicated shapes – light is a great way of doing this. Three-dimensional molecules make excellent drug compounds, so I try to make new and exciting molecules that could one day be turned into medicines.

Photochemistry requires special equipment, so the reactions I set up often look like something from a Sci-Fi film! Here is a picture of one of my reactions. The blue light is mainly UV-light – a wavelength that is really good at transferring energy to molecules.

These lamps get really hot (around 800 °C!) so are surrounded by a jacket of cool water. You can see the reaction mixture in the glass vessel here and we usually wrap the whole thing in aluminium foil to help reflect all of the light back into the reaction.