Profile

I live just outside Cambridge with my wife and our pet dog and budgie. I have worked at Johnson Matthey for 9 years in a couple of different roles, including 7 years in my current role. In my spare time I enjoy listening to music (and occasionally playing it – I own both an electric and acoustic guitar, although both have been gathering dust of late!) and reading – I tend to read a lot of non-fiction on history or music biographies, although have recently got back into fiction. I am also an avid boardgamer. I enjoy most sports, although I tend to watch more sport than play it – my football team is Liverpool FC so you will find me in good spirits these days!

I work closely with various car manufacturers (our customers) to develop new catalytic convertor technologies which reduce the amount of harmful pollutants (such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and unburnt fuel molecules) they would otherwise emit into our atmosphere. Cars are forced to reduce their emissions to meet increasingly strict environmental standards, so we are constantly pushed to design better and better catalyst technologies and show that we are better than our competitors! The catalyst technologies we develop have to withstand hundreds of thousands of miles driving, potentially reaching temperatures in excess of 1000 degrees Celsius in the process, so have to be very durable. To develop newer and better products, I work within a team of fellow engineers and chemists. As an engineer, it’s my job to assess the challenges that need to be overcome, based on what our customer requires, and to design ways to test our products – the chemists then use their expertise to develop new catalyst technologies to test.