Profile

I have lived in Edinburgh for about 20 years. I love being outside, and especially to go fishing or swimming in the sea. I am a Formula 1 racing fan, and I can’t wait to be able to travel again, and see some races. Even though I am old, I have a PlayStation, and I particularly enjoy driving games like Gran Turismo and DiRT Rally. I also use GPUs similar to those in game consoles to do scientific research.

At the moment, I study additives for lubricants that make engines and motors last longer and be more efficient, and magnetic liquids that can be used to deliver medicines to particular parts of the body and to locate and treat cancer.

My work involves using computers to simulate what materials look like at the molecular level. I can watch how molecules behave, and understand how they give rise to the properties of materials that we see and use. You can see an example here: Friction

This is useful, because I can help chemists to decide what kinds of molecules to make, in order to give a material with particular characteristics, such as appearance, viscosity, melting point or boiling point, and many other properties.

It is very important to connect my calculations with experiments, and many of these experiments are carried out with some of the world’s largest apparatus, such as the Diamond Light Source near Oxford, which accelerates electrons around a 600-metre ring in order to produce intense X rays for looking inside liquids and solids. So although my work mainly involves sitting in front of a computer, or working out mathematical formulas, I do escape from time to time, and get to visit these amazing machines!

Diamond Light Source

My work on lubricants is helping to make engines and motors last longer, and run more efficiently. This reduces waste and carbon dioxide emissions. It turns out that very small concentrations of additive molecules in oil can protect the surfaces and moving parts of engines. My computer simulations help us to understand how molecules attach to the surfaces, and protect them. I study different types of molecules, and figure out which ones work best. I work closely with manufacturers, and they use our simulations to design better products. In normal times, this aspect of my work involves a lot of travelling to different companies, which I really enjoy.

Frames from ‘molecular movies’

I work with colleagues in Austria, India, and Russia on magnetic liquids. These liquids contain magnetic nanoparticles, and so their properties can be controlled using magnetic fields. There are very many applications, such as using the magnetic nanoparticles to deliver drugs to whichever part of the body needs treatment. This is useful, because drugs are often toxic, and you don’t want to poison healthy parts of the body. The particles can also be used to locate tumours. In an oscillating magnetic field, they heat up (a bit like water in a microwave) and destroy the surrounding tissue, which is useful for destroying tumours. My work in this area involves computer simulations and mathematical modelling of magnetic liquids, and I collaborate with other theoreticians, and experimentalists. I started working on this about 20 years ago, and it gave me the opportunity to visit scientists in Russia. Since then, we have become close friends, and we have visited each other once or twice every year (except this year!) to continue our work together. For various reasons, I can say that this part of my work changed my life. I even learned to speak some Russian!

A droplet of a magnetic liquid makes a ‘hedgehog’ when exposed to a magnetic field

I don’t like getting up early in the morning, and prefer to work until later in the evening. A typical day starts with a couple of strong cups of coffee, and then involves a mix of teaching, meeting with members of my research group, having conversations or meetings with colleagues, analysing and preparing scientific data, writing journal articles and being a reviewer for others’ articles, applying for research grants, and yes – sometimes boring administrative jobs.

King’s Buildings Campus (drone photo)

Joseph Black Chemistry Building (drone photo)

The Old Chemistry Library which is now where the computational chemists work

Some of the computers (with CPUs and GPUs) used in my work