I completed my masters degree in applied chemistry and chemical engineering with first class honours at the University of Strathclyde.

The purpose of my research was to explore various ways to improve the electrochemical characteristics of the carbon felts within vanadium redox flow batteries. To achieve this, I experimented with various techniques to improve the felts, such as microwave treatment and oxidisation. I then measured the performance of the techniques using cyclic voltammetry and I also conducted contact angle experiments, which involved setting up a camera to record the contact angle formed by placing a single drop of liquid onto the surface of the felt, as a means of calculating the degree of wetting.

This internship was funded by an RSC grant which I applied for and obtained. The purpose of my research was to analyse a large dataset of solvent/ solute systems using python, to determine if certain molecular properties, if any, could be linked to a physical phenomenon known as the induction time of the crystalising system. To do this I utilised a free open-source cheminformatics software called RDKit to transform the SMILES 3D-strucutre of each solute/ solvent system into a set of 200 molecular descriptors. I then analysed the database using the Pandas library to look for correlations between molecular descriptors and the induction time.

I was awarded a British council scholarship to go to China during my second year of university in order to work as an intern at an air and water filtration company located in Shanghai. In this role I was collaborating with engineering and marketing teams in order to produce educational articles which outlined the benefits of air and water filtration in a heavily polluted megacity. This was an exercise in science communication for me, as I had to understand the technology behind the various filtration products and produce articles aimed at an audience not familiar with the science and engineering.