Ioana Sovago Email & Phone Number

London, England, United Kingdom

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Copenhagen Area, Denmark

Currently as a Postdoctoral researcher, my role is to implement the powder X-ray diffraction technique in analysing co-amorphous drugs. My main task in this project was to prepare the co-amorphous sample using quench cooling and ball milling methods; to measure and interpret the data. The corresponding co-crystalls were also prepared by solvent evaporation. We have looked at various drugs and amino acid combinations. The amorphous materials were measured using Total Scattering Synchrotron radiation and converted using Fourier transformation into Pair Distribution Function. In most of the cases we found only short order arrangement of the molecules in the amorphous state when compared with the corresponding crystal structure. Where individual amorphous components of the co-amorphous drugs were possible to prepared we found that the co-amorphous sample were actually a physical mixture. I am also involved in projects where new crystal structure of hydrate or anhydrate forms of the drugs were found. Hydration and dehydration process of pharmaceuticals were as well investigated using Parametric Rietveld refinement. We obtained kinetic information from this type of refinements such as the type of nucleation growth process. This is an important step in understanding and controlling the hydration and dehydratation process which is vital in pharmaceutical industry.

School Of Chemistry

My PhD research has been focused on the investigation of the polymorphic and phase transition materials with high importance in different fields such as pharmacology, solid-state chemistry, and materials science. We used High-resolution X-ray diffraction technique, Neutron diffraction and charge density approach. The charge density approach offers detailed analysis of the electron density in solid-state molecular systems and may be used to extract information on the factors involved in the differing energies of polymorphs. We have investigated the rank stabilities using lattice energy calculations based on experimental charge density approach as well as using fully theoretical approaches based on periodic single point calculations. The effect of the hydrogen bonds in the rank stabilities in small organic molecules and transition metal complexes were also investigated.We discover very close lattice energies, under 1kJ/mole in case of sulfathiazole polymorphs. However, the lattice energy calculations using two different theoretical approaches resulted in different ranking stabilities.

Master'S Degree, Chemistry

Bs, Chemistry