Profile

An chemistry lecturer. In Inorganic Chemistry (the best kind of chemistry). This probably sounds like a lot of what I do is teach chemistry, and it is a big part. Its a part that I enjoy more and more about the job. I love thinking of ways to explain tricky concepts and having an excuse to be publicly enthusiastic about a random chemistry concept like molecular orbital theory. Oddly none of my friends or family want to hear me talk about that so it is a rare opportunity.

However, two main ‘life pathways’ for chemists tend to be either going into an industrial/company position after a PhD or doing ‘Postdoctoral’ research positions. I did both and decided that what I love doing is inventing. An actually being a chemistry lecturer involves lots of this. A large part of my job is doing research, and trying to think of and propose ideas to solve problems that will fund such research. I am really interested in trying to use a fundamental scientific understanding of the way things work to try to help solve some of the big issues we face: Diagnosing and treating diseases, making clean energy, using waste resources to make new resources to list but a few. These are very big goals, you can’t expect to ‘solve’ anything overnight.

My days are either pretty full of teaching based tasks – planning lectures, workshops, writing exams and marking assignments, or they are filled with playing around in the lab, getting my research up and running, which sometimes involves coming out of the lab and writing a proposal to apply for money to go back into the lab. I tend not to be in one place for very long and spend the whole day rushing around the university from my office, to lectures, to the lab and to workshops. I love being busy.