Research Scientist at Johnson Matthey, Sonning

Johnson Matthey, a FTSE 100 company, is a global leader in sustainable technologies specialising in catalysis, precious metal products, chemicals and process technology.  With operations in over 30 countries, we employ more than 13,000 people.  Johnson Matthey uses science to make the world cleaner and healthier. Over the past two…

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Development of operando spectroscopic methods and controlled catalyst preparation

The development of operando spectroscopic methods and controlled catalyst preparation are both essential tools in understanding the complex properties of catalysts. Heterogeneous catalysts, for example supported metal nanoparticles, are exceedingly dynamic and although unconsumed by the process of catalysis they adapt to the evolving chemical environment. Elsewhere, the chemical steps involved within…

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The application of Kerr-gated Raman spectroscopy in zeolite catalysed hydrocarbon conversion reactions

In this work, methanol-to-hydrocarbons, biomass-upgrading reactions and plastic conversion are studied over zeolite catalysts, using vibrational spectroscopy to give mechanistic insight. Raman Spectroscopy can identify carbonaceous surface species during catalysis, though in many cases strong emission from the laser interacting with the sample causes intense fluorescence which prevents collection of…

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Deciphering cellular sugar pathways using chemically-controlled carbohydrate probes 

All cells use sugar, but a consequence of unbalanced sugar usage is disease through hexosamine sugar biosynthetic pathways. To precisely define the roles of hexosamine sugar-driven effects, we designed chemical tools sensitive for live-cell applications, for example our light-controlled photo-sugars and our cell compartment-specific “GlycoID” biorthogonal labeling strategy. These precision…

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Oxidation Catalysis by Isolated Co and Rh Atoms in N-doped Carbon

Transition metal atoms isolated in the surface of nitrogen-doped carbon have demonstrated excellent thermocatalytic and electrocatalytic performance, most notably in reactions involving oxygen. In the current work, the low temperature thermocatalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide was studied over Co atoms isolated in a nitrogen-doped carbon support. Steady-state isotopic transient kinetic…

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Adventures in Plumbing, Heating, and Lighting

I will present selected examples of our efforts in the use of NMR for the analysis of the kinetics and mechanism of processes catalysed by Lewis / Bronsted acids and bases, by transition metals, and by halide ions. The examples are chosen to give an overview of our the development…

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Machines Learning NMR Better than Quantum Mechanics…. Really? Nah…..

We present our next generation machine learning system, IMPRESSION-G2, capable of predicting NMR parameters including chemical shifts and scalar coupling constants for a range of common non-metallic NMR active nuclei. Based on a neural network architecture, and trained on a dataset of DFT-predicted parameters for >10,000 3D chemical structures (>500,000…

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