I am an organic chemist working on the how life started on the early Earth at the Department of Chemistry, UCL. Biology is so chemically complex that it can be difficult to comprehend how such a beautiful system came about at the origin of life - but it had to have started somehow. And it started with organic chemistry. DNA, RNA, and proteins- they are all organic molecules. They are the 'canonical' structures. All (!) we have to do is retrace those early steps. This sounds all very simple, but historically this area of research has been held back by difficulties in making the basic components of life with any selectivity for the natural structures because of difficulties in finding conditions to tame the reactivity of high energy molecules that may have been present on primordial Earth. Life only uses three core structures for genetics and function: DNA, RNA and proteinogenic enzymes, but there must have been some sort of exquisitely selective chemistry that chose these structures, and not any of the myriad potentials. We are discovering the conditions and boundaries for allowing the molecules of life to emerge from. 

I completed an MChem in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Manchester. My laboratory apprenticeships during my undergraduate studies were under the guidance of Professors David Procter, Darren Dixon and Jonathan Clayden. I was awarded the following during my time there: Zochonis Special Enterprise Award; Degussa Prize for Organic Chemistry; Mercer Scholarship; Roger Grice Memorial Prize for Theoretical/Physical Chemistry; R. T Warren Prize; J. K. Sutherland Prize for Organic Chemistry. 

My PhD was in Organic Chemistry with Professor John D. Sutherland FRS. After a brief interlude with Professor Igor Larrosa at Queen Mary University of London as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in organometallic catalysis, I returned to prebiotic chemistry in in 2013 to start a highly productive association with Professor Matthew Powner as a Research Associate/Fellow.