Profile

I live near Watford, near the Harry Potter Studios which I love visiting! ⚡ I love going swimming and taking long walks to see what plants and birds I can find – water birds are my favourite! When I’m at home you’ll find me on the sofa watching Star Trek on Netflix and doing a jigsaw, or looking after my houseplants. I’m never happier than when I have a cup of tea and a biscuit, preferably a chocolate one!

I am a chemist (I studied chemistry at university) but I now work in the School of Pharmacy at UCL where I help to teach students who want to be pharmacists. I teach lots of different things, mostly about organic chemistry and biochemistry.

I lead a team of researchers working on a range of different projects to find new medicines to treat infections and neurodegenerative conditions. The researchers in my team are mostly PhD students who spend 3 years with me doing research, and will get their PhD at the end! I also have people in my team who are studying for their masters degree, and are usually only with me for 6 months. Lots of the medicines we make are inspired by compounds found naturally in the environment. We are really interested in compounds that microbes produce to fight each other, because they could maybe be used as antibiotics!

I prefer to work in the office so I travel into UCL every day, although many of my colleagues often work from home. When I arrive at work I have breakfast and a cup of tea at my desk while I check my emails.

Usually I have a few meetings in the day with students in my research team, where we discuss their progress and I help them plan the next steps of their projects. Sometimes I get to go into the lab if I need to show someone how to use some equipment or teach them a new technique! Sometimes I have teaching, which can be to 200 students in a lecture theatre, or 50 students in a workshop or lab class. The rest of the time I spend planning new research projects, applying for money to do our research, or writing up our results to share with other scientists.