I am a Reader in Chemistry at the University of Stratchlyde.  I was born in London, but grew up in Cumbria in north west England.  After obtaining a Masters degree in Chemistry from the University of Sheffield, I worked as a synthesis chemist for Norbrook Laboratories before reading my PhD in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge.  Between 2008 and 2011, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark and then at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, Germany.   In 2012 I was awarded a Marie Curie Research Fellowship and returned to the UK to join the Department of Physics at the University of Strathclyde.  I started as a Lecturer in the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry in 2014.   I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2019, and to Reader in 2022.

The main focus of my research is the development and application of molecular simulation and molecular informatics methods to solve industrially relevant problems at the interface between biochemistry and chemical physics.  Recent examples have included the development of new methods for computational drug discovery (in collaboration with AstraZeneca, GSK, and Pfizer) and the design of an enzyme for use in food manufacturing (in collaboration with Chr. Hansen A/S).   I am Founding Director of the cancer diagnostics company, Dxcover (formerly ClinSpec Diagnostics Ltd)

• Theoretical and computational chemistry
• Solvation Thermodynamics
• Molecular Simulation
• Cheminformatics/Bioinformatics
• Drug Discovery
• Biochemistry
• Machine Learning