Anna Slater: Advanced Materials

Dr Anna Slater, Royal Society University Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, answers questions surrounding her research.

Dr Anna Slater interview image

Tell us what your research is about?

Making new chemicals and materials can be challenging – discovery takes time and resources. Then, even when you’ve found a new molecule or material, it can be very difficult to make it on a large scale in a sustainable, reproducible way. We develop techniques to make discovery more efficient, and chemistry reaction processes more reliable, sustainable, and scalable, shortening the pipeline to wider use of the materials we make.

What or who first inspired you to be interested in your research subject?

I’ve always been interested in how things are made – and what we can do to make the process better! – but I didn’t start using our main technique, flow chemistry, until I saw a great talk by Professor Harris Makatsoris, then at Brunel University, during my first PDRA position. Going to talks outside my own research field has always been a source of inspiration and a good use of time.

What are you most proud of achieving during your research career so far?

I am most proud of the people I work with, and their achievements, whether that’s finishing a PhD thesis despite COVID, figuring out how to solve a complex problem, or discovering a shiny new crystal structure. Building our team over the last 6 years has been a joy, even when it’s been challenging.

What techniques and equipment do you use to conduct your research?

We are primarily organic chemists, using synthesis, analysis, and crystallisation to form solid materials. Alongside this, we use flow chemistry – reactions through pipes rather than flasks – automation, and increasingly we are getting into data-driven approaches, trying to build a flow reactor that can discover new materials or optimise known ones without human intervention, and trying to maximise the amount of information we can get out of each experiment.

Which other subjects are important for your research?

We collaborate with engineers, physicists, social scientists, computer scientists, other chemists, instrument scientists, analytical scientists…the list is growing! Working at the interface with other disciplines is a core theme of what we do as researchers.

What is the key to running a successful research group?

I am still learning – there’s always room for improvement. Valuing everyone’s contributions, building a diverse team, listening and being flexible, celebrating the successes and working on the challenges together, and starting from a foundation of mutual trust and respect are all things we try to do.

What impact is your research having outside of academia?

Our work spans from the fundamental to the very applied; we are working with our industrial partners to develop more sustainable ways of carrying out their large-scale processes, potentially leading to large reductions in waste and energy consumption as we work towards Net Zero.

How do you plan to develop your research in the future?

By increasing the level of automation we use, we will get to a place where we can rapidly explore chemical processes; with this in hand, we plan to look at fundamentals of functional molecular materials in greater detail, and, at the other end of the scale, optimise industrial processes that are used on an enormous scale to demonstrate what can be achieved with a switch to flow methods.

What advice would you give to someone considering a career in research?

No advice fits everyone, apart from perhaps: ‘everyone is smart – distinguish yourself by being kind’ (e.g., discussed by Professor Emily Bernhardt). I hope we can get academia to a place where ‘kind’ is the default.

Where can readers learn more about your research?

You can find us on our research group website or follow me on Twitter at @annagslater.

 

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