Profile

I work in the Molecular Magnets  group, although I don’t actually make magnets. I make what are called frustrated spin systems, which is a fancy way of saying we try to confuse electrons. When electrons get confused, it does some complicated things to them which might let us build new kinds of computers. Fast computers. Really, really, fast computers.

My main job is as a synthetic chemist, which means I make things. Most of those things are big rings of metals (in green) surrounded by all kinds of other atoms.

Most of the time, they don’t work. Sometimes they do, and my boss is happy and I get to use a lot of expensive equipment to study what I’ve made. One perk of being a scientist is the really cool stuff we get to use.

Caffeine is probably the one constant in every lab. In both labs I’ve worked in, when the coffee machine breaks it’s a minor catastrophe. Without it, the chemistry department would grind to a halt. Chemistry is dangerous, sometime we’re working with (potential) explosives or chemical weapons and we need to be awake. Which is why every day starts with a coffee. That, and I hate mornings so coffee means I’m not rude to the people I work with.

Apart from coffee, I don’t really have a typical day. Some days I’ll walk into the lab at 9.30 and not go back to my office until I’m too hungry to keep working. Other times I’ll be sitting in the office for a couple of hours because I have papers to read and no experiments to run. I don’t have to explain to anyone how I spend my time. If I’m hungover tired and don’t feel like working, I hide in the office pretending to read. If I’m heading for a big result, you can’t drag me out of the lab for anything.

It’s one of the great things about science. There are so many different ideas, skills and pieces of equipment that if something isn’t working I can talk to my supervisor at 10 and be doing something different by 10.30.