Faraday Discussions editorial board members

Susan Perkin

University of Oxford, UK

Susan Perkin is Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Oxford. She earned her DPhil in 2006, which was followed by a Junior Research Fellowship at Merton College, Oxford. She then set up a laboratory at UCL (London) before moving to the Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory in Oxford in 2012. She leads an experimental research group investigating properties of liquids and soft matter in confined geometry. Current interests include electrostatics in concentrated electrolytes and ionic liquids, molecular mechanisms of friction and lubrication, and field effects on confined liquids. She has been awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council , the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and a Philip Leverhulme Prize from The Leverhulme Trust.

Susan Weatherby

Royal Society of Chemistry, UK

Susan is the Senior Programme Manager for Conference Development at the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). She commissions, develops and supports the organisation with a range of multi-day conferences including the Faraday Discussions, and through her work as FSCC Secretary has oversight of the Faraday Discussion series.

Susan started her career with us in a publishing role as Assistant Editor for the journals Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics and Faraday Discussions. Since then, she has changed career within the RSC with roles including journal editorial positions, working with and supporting our specialist subject communities, and oversight of our awards programme and science policy work. Before joining us, Susan completed a BSc in Chemistry and PhD in Materials Chemistry at the University of Nottingham.

George Booth

King’s College London

George Booth is a university reader in theoretical physics at King’s College London. The main focus of his research lies in computational electronic structure theory, with the development of a range of numerical tools to tackle correlated electron problems in both quantum chemistry and condensed matter.

He aims to work at the intersection of traditional chemistry and physics disciplines, with applications ranging from frustrated magnetism to theoretical spectroscopy and quantum computing. His group develop in a number of widely used simulation packages, and is an active member of national computational modelling consortia, including the Thomas Young Center and the Materials and Molecular Modelling Hub.

After completing his a MSci at Nottingham (2006), he studied for a PhD in computational chemistry at Cambridge university, where he developed novel stochastic algorithms for correlated electron problems.

Rachel Evans

University of Cambridge, UK

Rachel Evans is Professor of Materials Chemistry at the Department of Materials Science, University of Cambridge. She obtained her MChem (2002) and PhD in Physical Chemistry (2007) from Swansea University. She was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Université Paris-Sud, France and subsequently held an FCT research fellowship between the University of Coimbra and the University of Aveiro, Portugal.

From 2009-2017, she was an Assistant Professor, and then an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin. Rachel’s research is highly multidisciplinary, involving polymer, colloidal and photochemistry, and the use of advanced scattering and spectroscopic characterization techniques. Current interests include the development of photoactive hybrid materials for luminescent solar devices, indoor photovoltaics, solar-thermal energy storage and nanodelivery.

David Fermin

University of Bristol, UK

David J. Fermin studied Chemistry at the Universidad Simón Bolívar (Venezuela) and completed his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Bath. He held a post-doctoral and senior research fellowships at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, before joining the University of Berne as Swiss National Science Foundation Professor.

He retuned to the UK in 2007, joining the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol where he was promoted to Professor of Electrochemistry in 2013. He has also held visiting academic posts at the Ecole Normale Superieure Cachan (2009), Caltech (2016-2017) and Universidad de Valparaiso (2017, 2020). He is a recipient of the Tajima Prize awarded by the International Society of Electrochemistry and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2018.

Julia Lehman

University of Birmingham

Julia Lehman is an Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Birmingham. She received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania (2013) before moving to JILA, University of Colorado, Boulder for a postdoctoral fellowship.

In 2017, Julia relocated to the UK and started her independent career as a University Academic Fellow at the University of Leeds and then moved to the University of Birmingham (2022). Her research interests include using high resolution infrared frequency comb laser spectroscopy and other laser-based methods to study reaction kinetics and collisional dynamics of small gas phase molecules relevant to planetary atmospheres or the interstellar medium.

David Lennon

University of Glasgow, UK

David Lennon (DL) obtained a B.Sc.(Hons) degree in Chemical Sciences (1985) and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics (1989) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). He subsequently took up postdoctoral positions at the University of Texas (Austin) and the University of Western Australia (Perth), before returning to the UK for a further research stint at UEA. That latter period involved, firstly, the application of solid state NMR to investigate adsorption on supported metal catalysts and, secondly, investigations in adsorbate photochemistry.

In 1996 DL moved to the University of Glasgow to take up an ICI Lectureship in Heterogeneous Catalysis. Remaining at Glasgow, DL is presently a Professor of Physical Chemistry and heads the School of Chemistry’s Heterogeneous Catalysis Section.

DL’s main interests are in surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis, with the majority of his work undertaken in collaboration with industrial partners. DL is a strong supporter of the Faraday Discussions meetings; his first meeting being in Reading in 1996 (105: “Catalysis and Surface Science at High Resolution”); he still has the conference bag to prove it!

Andy Mount

University of Edinburgh

Andy Mount is Professor of Physical Electrochemistry at the University of Edinburgh. Andy graduated and gained his PhD in Chemistry from Imperial College. He had a spell of postdoctoral research at Oxford University, where he was a Research Scholar at University College, a College Lecturer at Keble College and a Junior Research Fellow at Green College.He was appointed to a Lectureship in Chemistry at Edinburgh in 1992.

In 2005 Andy was promoted to Reader, and in 2012 was promoted to Professor. He is also Dean of Research & Strategic Partnerships in the College of Science & Engineering (CSE) at Edinburgh University.

With around 130 journal publications and 11 patents, Andy’s research interests include fundamental and applied electrochemistry, sensing and analysis, development and application of healthcare technologies, and low-carbon, clean nuclear energy.

Julia Weinstein

University of Sheffield, UK

Julia Weinstein is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, the University of Sheffield. Julia obtained her Diploma in Chemistry (with honours) from Moscow Lomonosov State University in 1990, followed by a PhD from the same institution in 1994, under supervision of Professor M Kuzmin and Professor N Sadovskii, on "The role of exciplexes in the mechanism of electron transfer in Marcus's kinetic region". She has been a member of the academic staff at the MSU since 1994.

In 2000, she became a Royal Society/NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Nottingham, which was followed by a temporary lectureship at the same institution. She was awarded an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship in 2004 on "Light-Switchable Molecular Devices". She joined the Department in Sheffield in 2005.