In this talk, I will introduce some of our automated high-throughput workflows that we have developed to accelerate the discovery, synthesis and property screening of molecular organic materials assembled using dynamic covalent chemistries and supramolecular strategies, for applications in gas uptake and separations, sensing, and in catalysis. In particular, we typically focus on organic cages and use this approach to target and develop non-conventional phases of porous organic materials such as liquids and glasses. However, while we use high-throughput automation to accelerate screening, this approach is inelegant and inefficient when applied blindly. Therefore, this high-throughput workflow is increasingly being integrated with computational modelling which helps to guide the design and discovery process, preventing experimental efforts being wasted on unpromising materials.
Biography
Becky is a Senior Lecturer and Royal Society University Research Fellow (URF) at Imperial College London. She obtained her MChem in 2009 at the University of Sheffield and completed her DPhil in 2013 at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Prof. Ed Anderson. She then worked with Prof. Andy Cooper FRS as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool, before being awarded a URF in 2019 allowing her to establish an independent research career. In May 2020 she joined the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, where she was then appointed as a Lecturer in 2022 and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2023. She is the automation lead in the Institute for Digital Molecular Design and Fabrication (DigiFAB), co-director of the EPSRC Centre for Rapid Online Analysis of Reactions (ROAR), and Co-I and on the management team for several other EPSRC Equipment Grants providing high-throughput automation facilities including ATLAS and DIGIBAT, and a CoI and on the Early Career Advisory Borad in the new AI Hub for Chemistry (AIchemy). Becky is also a committee member on the RSC Porous Materials Interest Group and serves on the early career advisory board for ChemPlusChem. Current research in the group focusses on the accelerated discovery of functional molecular organic materials assembled using dynamic covalent and supramolecular strategies. This includes the development of high-throughput automated workflows, and also of non-conventional phases of porous materials such as liquids, liquid crystals, and glasses.