Profile

I originally come from South Africa, but I have lived in the UK for the past 8 years. I did my undergrad at the University of Sheffield and moved to St Andrews last August to start my PhD. I live a walking distance away from the School of Chemistry (University of St Andrews), so I get my exercise by walking to and from Uni. Up until late 2020, I was an ardent jogger, and this includes running a half marathon in 2019 in Birmingham in support of the Brain tumor Charity. After one fall too many, I hung up my running shoes and now I just walk. Although I dislike cooking, I quite enjoy trying out different foods. I am a practicing Christian and also a nature lover, so I enjoy an occasional hike. My pronouns are she/her.

My research is a joint venture between Materials Chemistry and Organic Chemistry. I make metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). These are porous materials consisting of metal ions or their clusters connected to each other via organic linkers. These materials are interesting because they can be modified and fine-tuned making them ideal for use as catalysts in organic synthesis. This is because in most cases, homogeneous catalysts would be used for these organic transformations and these tend to be expensive and hard to separate from the products. MOF catalysts are heterogeneous and therefore easily separable and reusable making them a superior alternative particularly in the pharmaceutical industry where green methods of developing new drugs and medicines are important. After making the MOFs, I test them as catalysts in organic reactions. I hope that I will be able to make some compounds that normally take a few steps to make using traditional catalysts in one pot. I enjoy being in the lab making stuff and analysing what I have made using technology such nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), infra-red spectroscopy (IR) and mass spectrometry.

I start off by setting up my experiments of the day, I usually plan to do the ones that take a few hours first and then monitor them according to the instructions in my lab book. Normally, when these have finished, I cool them down/warm them up, and remove solvents using a rotary evaporation. While this is going in, I set up the experiments that need longer reaction time so that I can leave them overnight. After drying off the solvent, I purify the product and make a sample that I take to NMR as a quick way of checking that I made what I wanted to make. I then leave and by the time I get home, my NMR report has been sent to my email, and I can quickly analyse it and know if I made the compound I wanted and the results I get set out the experiments I will carry on the next day.