Profile

I moved from Dublin nearly two years ago to pursue a PhD in the UK. I came here as it was always my dream to move abroad and York seemed like as good a place as any.

I currently play rugby with the University team, I like to go rock climbing with friends, and when the weather is nice we sometimes travel to different parts of the country to climb outdoors!

My friend and I also write and preform songs together whenever we can, we mostly write folk music. I play guitar and sing and he plays any instrument that has strings.

Metals such as gold, palladium and rhodium all have really interesting chemistry and used all over the world to do really important things. Not many people know this, but gold can be found in the electronics of every single mobile device in the world as it’s really gold at conducting electricity! Palladium and rhodium are used in car exhausts and can be found in every single automobile on the planet.

My work focuses on using these metals for another purpose, to use them in chemical reactions! These metals can allow us to make some really useful chemicals that are beneficial to everyone on the planet. I am trying to learn more about how these metals work using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance a technique that lets us see what is happening to each molecule during a reaction!

I wake up at 8:30 am, I have a short 10 minute walk to work where I have a quick breakfast and get right to work at 9:00 am. I spend most of my day doing experiments in the lab. Then I have lunch with friends, and in the afternoon it’s back to the lab to look at my results. There is a lot of people who work in my lab with me so we all get to chat and listen to music while we work. Then at about 5/6 o’clock I finish up for the day and go home. I live with six of my friends so after work I get to go home and hang out with them all.