Professor Ross Forgan he/him
Professor of Supramolecular and Materials Chemistry
Mission Priority Areas
As one of the Co-Directors of DiveIn, I have been involved from the near beginnings.
I strongly believe in the diversity-driven approach and want to help change the landscape of postgraduate research.
I have always been interested in how we can control how materials assemble, and how we can program and design specific structures, topologies, and arrangements at the pre-synthetic stage. Underpinning this, is my interest in inorganic and coordination chemistry, where I use the diverse behaviours of metal ions to control and drive material formation. My group currently works with metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), where organic linkers are connected by metal ions into network structures that often exhibit exceptional porosity. We are interested in how to control the synthesis of these materials and their physical properties, and applying them in clean energy, sensing, and nanomedicine. As part of this, we focus on advanced structural characterisation methods, such as high pressure X-ray diffraction, serial crystallography, and electron diffraction.
MOFs have such a wide variety of properties, their potential for interdisciplinary application is huge. Currently we collaborate with biologists and physicists in developing diverse applications, and I would love for this to continue and be expanded. We also work with related materials – collaborations include how to influence peptide self-assembly by metal ion coordination, and how to develop new interlocked molecules – so expanding the application of our expertise and skills into new classes of materials would be a highly attractive outcome for me.
Students in my team can expect to learn core skills in synthetic and analytical solid-state chemistry, but we regularly place students with collaborators (e.g. through visiting scholarships and supporting mobility grants) to ensure they receive interdisciplinary training. Group alumni have gone on to a range of careers, including: independent academia; various roles across the crystallisation science, pharmaceutical, and life science industries; teaching; and scientific publishing. We have always been committed to ensuring our team is a safe space for all to flourish, and our approach is to promote collaborative open research. Personally, I have led the School of Chemistry’s EDI committee, delivering a successful Athena SWAN Bronze award in 2018, and as one of the DiveIn co-directors I am committed to our mission of promoting best practice in equity, diversity, and inclusion across the CDT.
