UKRI Future Leaders Research Fellow
I am a UKRI research fellow based in the School of Chemistry, Pharmacy and Pharmacology at UEA. My group develops advanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques to further our understanding of biomaterials, microbial metabolism, biomass and small molecule pharmaceuticals. We are pioneering the use of spatially resolved NMR to culture cells in different spatial regions of a sample and monitor how they interchange metabolites. This way, we can create convenient and information-rich models of the human intestine to monitor the digestion of foods at the molecular level in real time, avoiding completely the use of cumbersome lab-based fermenters and drastically reducing the quantities of material required. Using similar approaches, we can study the metabolism of microorganisms in the soil and ocean involved in the global cycling of nitrogen and sulphur. Other active areas of research include the development of ultrafast methods to determine the key properties of small molecule pharmaceuticals and tools to characterise the polymer composition of algal biomass.
I achieved my Master of Chemistry (MChem) degree in 2013 from the University of Liverpool and my PhD in 2017 on the characterisation of peptide-based hydrogels by NMR, for which I won the Ronald Belcher Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry. I moved to UEA in October 2017 to follow an independent research fellowship on the gelation mechanisms of polysaccharides, funded by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. In August 2020, I was awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to further my research into the development and application of localised NMR techniques for applications across drug discovery, materials science and microbiology.