Over International Women's Day we spoke with Dr. Francesca Fiorentini, former PhD student, Williams Group, University of Oxford and UK Catalysis Hub member.
What inspired you to pursue a career in catalysis research?
I really enjoyed synthetic inorganic chemistry during my undergraduate degree, so wanted to continue with that chemistry for my PhD. However, I also wanted to enter a field that had tangible industrial applications. Catalysis seemed like the best of both worlds!
How did you first get involved with the UK Catalysis Hub?
I did my PhD with Charlotte Williams from 2020 until the end of 2024, where I was involved in sustainable polymerisation catalysis research and attended UK Catalysis Hub conferences.
Can you describe the project you’re working on with the Hub?
During my PhD I investigated structure-activity relationships in dinuclear, mixed-metal homogeneous catalysts for sustainable polymerisations. The aim was to try to discover these structure-activity relationships to better understand the catalysis. For example, we wanted to better understand the distinct roles of the metals in the catalysis, and the role of intermetallic separation, and their effect on the mechanism of catalysis. Our hope is by better understanding the catalysis, this will help us to design better catalysts in the future.
Why is catalysis research important in today’s world?
Catalysis is needed for most chemical industrial processes, meaning that it impacts the production of almost all the goods we use daily, such as our medicines, food, and plastics. Trying to find better (cheaper, more efficient, more selective) and new catalytic processes means that as a society we will (hopefully) have access to better, cheaper, and more sustainable products in our daily lives.
How is your work making a difference?
I think that, in catalysis research, we can often be very focussed on making better (faster, more selective, more cost-effective) catalysts, but the “why” of catalyst design is often less explored and less understood. The work in my PhD went some way to explaining why some of the high-performance sustainable polymerisation catalysts reported from the Williams group work so well. I believe that this will help future catalyst design, since we now understand better the roles of the different design features in these catalysts. Now, I’m exploring the use of these sustainable polymers in medical applications, so I feel like I’m coming full circle.
What are the biggest challenges you face as an early career researcher in catalysis?
A challenge I find is trying to find the balance between pursuing interesting avenues of research that might be relatively risky, and the reality that in the current academic landscape you need to be publishing articles, so trying to pursue simpler projects that are more likely to “succeed” (in the form of publications). Applying for funding in the form of grants and fellowships also takes away time and mental energy from my research, so it all requires finding the right balance.
What are your future aspirations in catalysis research, and what excites you the most about the future of catalysis research and its potential impact?
In my own work, I would like to use the catalysis that I investigated in my PhD to make polymer-based methods to delivery therapeutic molecules (e.g. small-molecule drugs, peptides, or nucleic acids) to cells within the body. A solid understanding of the catalysis at play is essential to understand how to fine-tune the polymer structure, and how to do this in a controlled way to access materials which will work in the way I need them to.
More broadly, I’ll be very interested to see how advances in catalysis help us to move away from petrochemicals in the polymer industry more generally, but also across the chemical industry.
Author:
Dr. Francesca Fiorentini, Postdoc, Anderson Lab, Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Koch Institute, MIT
