About me

Coming out of a 4 year MSci in Neuroscience from the University of Nottingham I spent 6 months working temporary jobs around where I grew up. During this time I became rather interested in homebrewing, and from that, excitement at how we are able to use microorganisms to make products for us. I found an opportunity to pursue this at a more academic level due to my scientific background and achieved an MSc in Biochemical Engineering with Distinction at the University of Birmingham. With my interest in how we can grow microorganisms holding fast, I was offered the opportunity to work with Dr Jim Gilmour at the University of Sheffield as a part of his algae biotechnology research group.

My project

My project forms part of a mini white rose network including Matthew Hughes (University of Leeds) and Manuela Lovinella (University of York) and together we are investigating the thermo-acidophilic red alga, Galdieria sulphuraria.

My goals are to deliminate cheap and efficient ways of growing the organism, as it is already known to produce some high value products such as the fluorescent protein phycocyanin, carotinoids, and glycogen. I am evaluating a range of available waste resources to understand how Galdieria may interact with them. Waste streams generally comprise of a mixture of different energy sources and previous horizontal gene transfer events enable Galdieria to metabolise over 50 carbon compounds. As such, my project includes a good balance of understanding growth in a biological standpoint, process design so see how we can put the biology to use, engineering (e.g. bioreactors) as we have found current technology to be unsuitable, as well as a dose of control system design and programming in order to ensure the equipment functions as intended.

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