I obtained my first taste of research as an undergraduate stagiaire at the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) in 1989 with Dr Jeremy Cockcroft. My undergraduate and graduate research was carried out in Oxford on aspects of solid state chemistry and magnetism with Professor Andrew Harrison (currently Professor of Solid State Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh and UK director at the ILL, Grenoble) and Professor Matt Rosseinsky (currently Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Liverpool). I gained a Royal Society/NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship to work on nitride chemistry with Professor Frank DiSalvo at Cornell University for two years (1995 & 1996) and then returned to Oxford as a Lloyd’s of London Tercentenary Foundation Fellow to begin work on oxynitride chemistry. In 1998 I was elected to a lectureship at the University of Exeter and moved to my current post in September 2000. I was awarded the Gibson-Fawcett Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2010 for which I am grateful to the many people who have passed through the group and with whom we have collaborated.

Timeline:

2000 - present: Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford & Official Fellow of Exeter College.

1998 - 2000: Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Exeter.

1997 - 1998: Lloyd’s of London Tercentenary Foundation Fellow and Junior Research Fellow at St Hugh’s College, Oxford.

1995 - 1996: Royal Society NATO Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell University.

1991 - 1994: D. Phil. In solid state chemistry and magnetism, University of Oxford.

1987 - 1991: BA in Chemistry, St John’s College, Oxford.