Profile

The aim of my research is to improve the way we make medicines and make them more sustainable. Current ways of making pharmaceuticals (a fancy word for medicine) produce lots of waste that needs to be disposed of and can use a lot of energy for heating, sometimes to as high as 200 oC. Common medicines like paracetamol (a painkiller) and salbutamol (for asthema) can produce as much as 100 kg of waste for every 1 kg of pharmaceutical made. I am helping to reduce this waste by using catalysts (which can speed up reactions and reduce unwanted byproducts) and light (which can be used instead of heat) to make these processes more efficient, reducing the impact on the environment and also making them cheaper!

Molecular structures of some common pharmaceuticals.

Molecules are made up of atoms joined together in different shapes. The lines show where the atoms are joined together and the letters indicate atoms of different elements; O = Oxygen, N = Nitrogen, S = Sulfur and H = Hydrogen. The corners where the lines meet are all Carbon atoms, but these aren’t written because there are so many.

Reactions trying out a new catalyst (thats what gives them the brown colour)

One of my reactions using blue LEDs instead of heat.

Me hard at work!