Profile

I live in Manchester with my Wife, Steph, who is also a scientist! Between us we like to go walking in the lake district and running races! This year I am running the Manchester half marathon – it will be the 5th time I’ve done a half and hoping to get a time under 1 hour 40 minutes (hoping being the key word there).

I grew up in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where the most popular sport was rugby league – I grew up supporting Bradford Bulls and like to try and watch as much rugby league as possible when I’m not at work. Although Bradford are not as successful as they used to be, I have hope they will once again bring back their former glories some time soon…

I also like to travel. My most recent trip was Borneo, the third biggest island on Earth and home to the Orangutan. Jungle trekking is an amazing experience, but peeling leeches off your back isn’t as fun! Worth it to see some of the rarest wildlife though, an experience I would recommend to anyone!

Chemistry is old – really old. In fact, it’s so old that we still use all the same methods to do chemistry in the laboratory that we used in the 19th Century! If you think in 1850 (nearly 200 years ago) horses were our main form of transport, candles to lit our homes, and no human had ever flown! Think now, and how the world has changed: We need a revolution in chemistry, and that is what I am trying to make happen with my work!

I do things differently to normal chemists! Instead of flasks that are usually used by chemists (You have probably seen flasks like these in the movies and on telly):

The glassware that chemists have used for nearly 200 years!

I use tubes and pumps (see picture below) using a technique called flow chemistry! You probably think that sounds a bit strange, but it actually is a much better way to do chemical reactions than some of the old-fashioned ways! Using tubes (which are smaller than flasks) we have much better control of our chemical reactions, so we can make them go much faster! When you are making important chemicals, such as pharmaceutical drugs, speed is a vital part of the process as the pharmaceuticals often costs millions of pounds to make, so need to be sold as quickly as possible!

My work station! Using these pumps I can make chemical reactions that ‘flow’ through tubes, different to what a normal chemist will do.

By improving the way we do chemistry in the lab, we can make even more important chemicals for all kinds of uses such as pharmaceutical drugs, in crop science and even things that have not been invented yet!

I also use something called enzymes to try and get even better control of my reactions. Enzymes are the naturally occurring catalysts that do all the chemistry that we see in nature, and can be used in much more environmentally friendly conditions than normal chemical reactions.

Using both flow chemistry and enzymes, I am trying to invent new, more efficient ways of creating the molecules that go into all sorts of different medicines.

Typically I will get into the lab around 8.30. A good piece of advice I was given years ago was not to check your emails first thing, and try and do some lab work so this is what I try and do – drop my bag and get an experiment on, or check some analysis from the previous day.

This can take anything between 30 minutes or all morning depending on the nature of the tasks I have given myself.

I will then have lunch and take some time out to read the news and about the sport. It’s important to have breaks so you don’t burn out!

I will often have a couple of hours time to write in the afternoon, so this includes writing up results in the form of a scientific paper, or sometimes presentations to deliver at meetings with other chemists.

Usually I will work until about 6 doing a mixture of these things, but this can be changed at the last minute depending on results (or a lack of!).

Obviously this has now changed as we all work from home. I am currently doing lots of writing up of my results in the form of scientific papers, and making plans for when I go back into the lab in the future!