Profile
Sarah Montgomery
-
About Me:
I’m a Research and Development Scientist at Johnson Matthey in Cambridge, UK. I live with my husband and young son in Newmarket. I enjoy gardening and day trips in East Anglia – especially by train because my son is really, really into trains at the moment!
-
Read more
I grew up in Oxford, and studied chemistry first in Sheffield, then Manchester. I moved to Cambridge to continue by career in science, working first at the university and now at Johnson Matthey. I’m a very curious person, I like to know how everything works: what all the plants are in my garden, how our house is put together, what’s going on in society and why.
-
My Work:
We study proteins which make chemical reactions happens faster – these are called enzymes, or sometimes biocatalysts. Our goal is to help people make the chemicals they need in a cheap, efficient way with low environmental impact.
-
Read more
Johnson Matthey is a company that’s committed to sustainability in a big way. Almost everything we make is intended to reduce pollution and carbon emissions, mainly through ‘catalysis’. By catalysing a chemical change, you can make it happen faster or at lower temperature, and in practice a process without a catalyst may not happen at all. One of our products is the catalytic converter – this goes on your car exhaust and uses precious metals to turn unburnt fuel into less-harmful products. Carbon and carbon monoxide are turned into carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas but generally not dangerous to humans. We do a lot of research into how to recycle the metals from catalytic converters to save having to mine more from the ground, and also how to reduce the amount of metal needed so that the resources we have can last longer.
In terms of my work specifically, we are looking at protein-based catalysts. Out team consider these the ‘next big thing’ as they can be made anywhere by bacterial fermentation, and don’t contain any chemicals made from crude oil. We can also use a speeded-up form of evolution to make these proteins more suited to our needs,
-
My Typical Day:
I work from 8am – 3pm so I can collect my son from school. I come in, check my emails and plan my experiments for the day (unless I’m already in the middle of something!). I work with a lot of students so I am often catching up with them, seeing how their experiments are going and helping make sure all the instruments they need are working. I may chat to our sales team about our products and whether they would suit a particular customer’s needs, and sometimes this means going and doing experiments to check. This year I am also helping to organise a conference so I am quite busy with that at the moment!
-
Read more
Things don’t always go to plan – sometimes our instruments don’t behave as expected, and I need to try and fix them or call an engineer. We have occasional ’emergencies’, like a customer needing an answer to a technical question or somebody else in the team needing extra help. Occasionally I have to present my results to different audiences, either the local team, more senior managers, or external audiences at conferences or in customer meetings.
-
What I'd do with the prize money:
The Cambridge Science Centre is setting up at the Trinity Centre which is close to us on the Cambridge Science Park, so we’re looking at science outreach activities involving enzymes that we could ‘deploy’ there!
-
Education:
I went to Cumnor primary school, which is at the top of a big hill just west of Oxford, then the local secondary Matthew Arnold school. I studied chemistry at the University of Sheffield, then did a PhD in biocatalysis (that is, enzymes doing chemical reactions) at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, part of the University of Manchester. Then I came to Cambridge to do some more research in a joint project between the university and the nearby Sanger Institute, looking at DNA and how living things use it. Just over a year ago I joined Johnson Matthey to work on biocatalysis again.
-
Qualifications:
For GCSE I did French, history, music, RE, separate sciences, as well as English and maths. I did AS level English lit., maths and all three sciences, then sadly dropped English for my A level year. I got a 2.1 Master’s in chemistry, and finally a PhD, also in chemistry.
-
Work History:
My first job was taking care of cats at a boarding cattery in the summer holidays. Then the summer after my first year at university I worked at Starbucks. The following summer I did my first science-related job, a short internship at the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim in Germany. I did another internship at my uncle’s company Thermal Hazard Technology, which makes calorimeters to test batteries. Then as part of my PhD I spent 3 months doing research at Johnson Matthey, in the same place I am now. I started at the Sanger Institute right after finishing my PhD, and I also did some work in a Covid testing lab during the pandemic.
-
Current Job:
I have quite a varied role, looking after students, doing experiments, reviewing the products we sell and thinking about how they can be improved. There is quite a bit of troubleshooting and lots of technical discussions – I don’t always know all the answers but I can usually look things up or make a guesstimate if I’m not sure. Our team of scientists present work to each other, and we also travel to conferences to talk to other scientists from elsewhere.
-
Employer:
For over two centuries, Johnson Matthey have used advanced metals chemistry to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.
Today, our renowned customers across the energy, chemicals and automotive industries rely on our technology and knowledge to decarbonise, remove harmful emissions and improve their sustainability.
And as the planet faces up to an era of huge global challenges including climate change, energy supply and resource scarcity, we’re continuing to innovate, providing solutions that are helping our customers and catalysing the net zero transition for millions of people every day.
-
My Interview
-
How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
curious, thoughtful, practical
What did you want to be after you left school?
a vet
Were you ever in trouble at school?
very rarely
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
maybe teaching
Who is your favourite singer or band?
maybe Dire Straits? mostly older stuff!
What's your favourite food?
lobster
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
to keep discovering new things
Tell us a joke.
What did one DNA say to the other? “Do these genes make me look fat?”
-