Hello! My name is Phil, and I'm a Bioengineering PhD student at Imperial College London. If you're interested in what I'm working on or what science I'm interested then you've come to the right place!
I've started up a blog to write about the things I'm working on, explain the theory and background of my work, and share papers I've come across that I've found to be interesting or unusual. These blogs will be written with no knowledge required in the subject area (I know that I certainly knew little about the subject area before I started working on my project!) and will hopefully be accessible to non-scientists too! I might also share any other interesting things I've stumbled upon, just to mix it up a bit!
To briefly summarise how I got here: I studied MSci in Chemistry with Industrial Experience at the University of Bristol (miss that city so much!) and completed my industry year at Syngenta, Jealott's Hill in their Formulation Technology Group, working on some newly developed surfactants (surfactants, or "surface active agents", are commonly found in detergents and are also present in some pesticides to improve performance). I really enjoyed my time at Syngenta; I found it greatly increased my confidence in the lab and I got a taste for carrying out research.
In my fourth year in Bristol, I carried out my Master's project in creating new iron and cobalt catalysts for the borylation of arenes. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in creating any that worked, but hey, that's research! Nevertheless, I realised that I wanted to carry on performing scientific research but on my own terms, which led to ...doing a PhD!
Although I enjoyed chemical synthesis, it was time for a change. I joined the Plastic Electronics CDT in 2018, where I knew that my chemistry knowledge and experience would be important, but with the opportunity to learn something new. And so...here I am!
I'll share more about my work in the future, catch you then!