Andy Cooper

Professor Andy Cooper FRS is the Director of the Materials Innovation Factory at the University of Liverpool. His research activities span a range of areas in materials chemistry including polymeric materials, porous organic cages, crystal engineering, supercritical fluids, carbon dioxide capture, materials for energy production, and high-throughput materials methodology. You can find out more about the research carried out in his group here:

Kim Jelfs

Kim is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Imperial College London, where her research group investigate the ways to use computer simulations to help discover new materials. You can find out more about Kim’s research and her research group here:

Becky Greenaway

Becky is the lead on this exhibit, and a postdoctoral research associate in Prof. Andy Cooper’s group at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests include making molecules from the ground up, and she is currently involved in the development of porous liquids (liquids with holes) and the use of state-of-the-art robotics to accelerate synthesis and the discovery of new organic cages.

Enrico Berardo

Enrico is a research associate in the group of Kim Jelfs at Imperial College London, where he uses computer models to understand how atoms and electrons behave in materials in order to increase their efficiency. He mainly focuses on materials for clean energy production and materials used for chemical separations. In his free time Enrico can be found cycling around London or playing basketball. You can find more about his research here:

Anna Slater

Anna is a Royal Society-EPSRC Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow at the University of Liverpool researching better ways to discover and scale up functional organic materials. Her research involves chemistry, engineering, automation, plumbing, and building things with molecules; she is a firm believer that if you can bake a cake, you can do organic chemistry (just don’t eat it). You can find out more about Anna’s research on her group website:

Tom Hasell

Tom is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the School of Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. Originally from Yorkshire, he is a graduate of the University of Nottingham, and has spent researching in America and Japan. Tom’s aim is to develop new porous materials from inorganic waste and other low cost or renewable resources. You can find out more about Tom and his research here:

Sam Chong

Sam Chong is a lecturer in materials chemistry at the Materials Innovation Factory and Department of Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. She uses an experimental technique called X-ray diffraction to study how atoms and molecules are arranged in materials. This information is vital to understanding why they exhibit certain properties, like porosity, and behave the way they do, so that we can design new materials in the future. You can find out more about Sam and her research here:

Ben Alston

Ben is the newly appointed Automation and Robotics Lead Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre For Materials Design situated within the Materials Innovation Factory. His research focuses on the use of automation and robotics in conjunction with computational methods to accelerate the materials discovery process. His current work focuses on the discovery of novel molecular crystals for the use in photocatalytic processes and energy storage.

Michael Briggs

Michael is currently a research coordinator in Prof. Cooper’s group with responsibility for the smooth running of the research group. His background lies in organic synthesis, honed over many years spent working in industry and academia, however these day he spends more time troubleshooting in the office than working at the bench.

Mike Bennison

Mike is a postdoctoral research associate in Prof. Andy Cooper’s group at the University of Liverpool. He has a range of research interests including the design of molecular cages that can assemble using new methods, polymers for applications in supercritical carbon dioxide and the synthesis of new materials from renewable or waste starting materials.

Chris Kane

Chris is a postdoctoral research associate in the Cooper group researching Robust Organic Tectonics (RoBOT). This project involves synthesizing small organic molecules that orient themselves in such ways to give rise to materials with interesting industrial properties. Chris spends his free time doing photography, cooking, and when not in the laboratory, he can be found strolling through city streets of Europe that are older than his beloved USA homeland. You can find out more about Chris here:

Ben Slater

Adam Kewley

Adam's PhD involved studying the synthesis and separation properties of organic cages. After finishing his PhD, he worked in industry in Crown Informatics and Unilever. He now works on the Gaia satellite project at the University of Cambridge. Away from work, Adam's interests include learning new software techniques, UI design, 3D design, computer games, board games, and piano - although he's particularly terrible at the piano. Further details about Adam can be found here:

Ben Egleston

Ben Egleston is a PhD student studying the chemistry of organic materials at the University of Liverpool. He is currently interested in ways to use liquids containing holes to store or sort gas molecules. As a research student, Ben spends most of his time in the lab using various techniques to investigate how gases are absorbed by these materials. Ben believes that developing new materials will make an important contribution to solving some of society’s biggest problems.

Ming Liu

Ming is a research associate in chemistry at University of Liverpool. He is interested in using porous materials for real-life applications. His research involves using porous cage material for pollutant capture, such as formaldehyde, a harmful gas in indoor air.

Dan Holden

Dan is a Postdoctoral Research Associate working part time in the Cooper group at the University of Liverpool. He has worked as part of a team producing cutting edge research, while also setting up his own business, D2U Coaching; this offers academic coaching across the UK. The company's aim is to use coaching to provide an additive service which creates a safe environment where academics can work out what excites, drives and motivates them, culminating in progressive goal setting:

Rebecca Docherty

Rebecca Docherty is a Knowledge Exchange Scientist in the Cooper Group at the University of Liverpool. Her work involves working between academia and industry to help lab-based research have a positive impact on society.

Sam Illingworth

Dr Sam Illingworth is a Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University, where his research involves using poetry to help connect science and society. You can find out more about Sam’s research and read some of his poetry on his website:

Valentina Santolini

Valentina is a PhD student at Imperial College London and she mainly plays with molecules on a computer. Her research involves drawing beautiful cages on a screen, with the hope that they will not be impossible for other scientists to make in the lab. She feels like building a cage is a bit like playing with Lego, you can put the pieces together to build something nice. When she doesn’t play with cages, Valentina likes to read in big armchairs, to cook and build things with her hands.

Lukas Turcani

Lukas Turcani is a PhD student at Imperial College London where he spends most of his time programming. He hopes to develop artificial intelligence which helps chemists design molecules.

Marcin Miklitz

Marcin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London. He uses computer simulation to predict the behaviour of porous organic cages without needing to synthesise them in laboratory. This can facilitate the design of new and better porous materials in the future. At this stage experiments are still needed to confirm his findings, but fingers crossed some day they won’t. At least, his predictions so far are slightly better than the weather forecasts.

James Blood

James is a 3rd year PhD student in Imperial College London’s Department of Chemistry. He studies the interactions between chemical warfare agents and porous materials. At this point he tends to clarify that he’s not making any new chemical weapons, but helping to provide a basis to help get rid of them. In his spare time he enjoys playing the guitar badly and correcting people’s maths and grammar on Facebook.

John Kenny

Dr John Kenny is a Research Associate in Nuclear Physics at the University of Liverpool. His job is to develop new radiation detection and measurement systems. He is currently working on the ISOL SRS spectrometer, which will allow precise measurement of the structure and reactions of unstable nuclei and will be installed in the world's most famous scientific laboratory; CERN. In his spare time, John develops apps and video games and enjoys exploring with his two year old twin daughters.

Ben Burger

Benjamin is doing a joint PhD with Computer science and Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. He works with robots in a chemistry lab - this work involves grasping and transporting objects with probabilistic robotics. His research is aimed at autonomous robotic systems discovering new materials and experimental robotic work, and helping robots do chemistry on their own. He firmly believes that autonomous robots deserve civil rights because they have a mind of their own.

Ed Jackson

Ed Jackson is a PhD student at Imperial College London. His research looks at whether it is possible to separate different molecules by sieving them using a porous material, which would save a lot of energy compared to current methods. To do this he uses computers to look at how molecules move through the pores.

Andrew Marsh

Andy Marsh is an MChem student at the University of Liverpool, and completed his 3rd and 4th year projects within the Cooper group. His research focuses on developing new methods for producing cages.

Chloe Stackhouse

Chloe is studying for her postgraduate degree at the University of Liverpool in the Cooper group. As well as focusing on independent studies, Chloe also works as part of a collaborative team funded by the European Research Council, involving three scientific teams including members of the Cooper Group. Chloe’s research focuses on making molecules for gas storage and separation, however her primary focus is using X-ray radiation in order to see how molecules arrange themselves in a crystal.

Rachel Kearsey

Rachel is a first year PhD student, who has recently moved from the University of Leeds after completing her undergraduate degree. Her research involves the synthesis of new ‘porous liquids,’ (that’s right, liquids with holes!) which is proving to be both challenging and fun! She is looking forward to sharing more about the group’s research at the exhibition.

Helen Cuthbertson

Helen Cuthbertson is a final year Masters student at the University of Liverpool. Her research involves researching how cages can be assembled into unique structures. This involves considering how different sections of cage molecules may find and attract each other in solution.