Departmental lecturer in practical chemistry with responsibility for the analytical equipment in the undergraduate teaching labs. I managed equipment servicing, maintenance, and user training, alongside the teaching of undergraduate chemists physical and analytical chemistry skills.

Development of a range of practical exercises for the undergraduate course at the University of Oxford. I focused particularly on the use of Earth's Field NMR spectrometers as a teaching tool but also developed a number of other analytical and spectroscopic exercises.

Project: The use of bisphosphonates as phase transfer reagents for bioactive fluorescence and near-infrared emitting quantum dots.The overall aim of the project is to prepare luminescent quantum dots with a stable surface ligand system, based on bisphosphonates, to improve their colloidal stability in vitro and in vivo and to develop them for applications in optical imaging. The system will also lend itself to multi-modal imaging applications by exploiting bisphosphonate ligands that can accommodate a radionuclide or Gd(III) centre for PET/SPECT and MR imaging respectively. This project is based on successful preliminary work by groups at Imperial College London (Chemistry), King’s College London (Pharmacy and Imaging Sciences) that has shown that biphosphonate ligands are excellent water-solubilising passivating agents.Supervisors: Prof Mark Green (KCL), Dr Maya Thanou (KCL) & Prof Nicholas Long (ICL)

10 week research project under the supervision of Prof Gary Attard, as part of the electrochemical research group. Research included the synthesis of PtNi alloys and their assessment via cyclic voltammetry. Work within the laboratory involved working with carbon monoxide and hydrogen, requiring a high degree of care and attention. Data acquired during the placement was published in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry (DOI: 10.1016/j.jelechem.2013.09.018).

Part-time job working an evening shift in the kitchen of a residential home. Work involved food preparation and cleaning the kitchens. A very high standard of hygiene had to be maintained at all times.