Please could you give an overview of what you’re working on?
I would describe myself as a theorist, driven by a desire to understand the universe more deeply through the lens of modelling and to apply these models to solving challenging questions. My background is in quantum chemistry, which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to explore the fundamental mechanisms behind chemical behaviour and interactions.
Quantum mechanics is a powerful tool: it not only provides sharp analytical insights but also enables prediction and design. These inherent strengths make it closely aligned with the goals of landscape exploration and pathway identification for sustainable development, particularly within the realm of sustainable chemistry.
Without a doubt, history has witnessed the continuous development of chemistry over the past several centuries and the ways in which it has revolutionised human civilisation. Today, chemistry and chemical products reach every corner of modern life, providing ease, comfort, convenience, and security. Yet every coin has two sides. Chemicals cannot be guaranteed to be safe under all circumstances. Many have adverse biological impacts, polluting and toxifying the environment and disrupting the normal development of living beings. These unintended chemical behaviours pose significant challenges to sustainability.
I became aware of this issue early in my PhD training and chose to pursue catalyst design and development as a way to contribute to environmental decontamination. I now leverage the power of computing and modelling to investigate the fundamental mechanisms of catalytic action and to apply this knowledge toward improving catalyst performance.
That's a high-level description of what I'm doing.
What was your research area, when a postdoc at Cambridge?
During my time at Cambridge, I worked in a slightly different domain known as theoretical pathology, where my focus was on predicting the evolutionary trajectories of influenza viruses. This question is both scientifically fascinating and societally meaningful, as such insights can guide vaccine design and improve public protection.
Seasonal flu outbreaks typically occur in winter, but vaccines must be prepared months in advance. This means that the viral strains included in each year’s flu jab are selected about half a year earlier, based heavily on modelling predictions, work that relates directly to my research.
Addressing this challenge requires extensive data analysis and theoretical modelling. We rely on big data and machine-learning algorithms to extract knowledge from the historical evolutionary paths of influenza viruses and use this information to forecast potential future directions. It is both an important and demanding task: strong predictions translate into better public protection, while inaccurate ones become lessons for improvement.
The project I was involved in was highly interdisciplinary. We collaborated with multiple international virology laboratories to continuously refine and validate our mathematical models, ensuring they reflected the best available scientific evidence.
Did you engage with support aimed at postdocs, such as with training, workshops, or other events?
Yes, absolutely. I visited the Postdoc Academy office frequently and became acquainted with many of the staff members there. I engaged in a wide range of workshops, training opportunities, and events -- so many that it would be difficult to list them all.
What stands out most vividly in my memory are the PdOC Society meetups, held every other Friday evening. We gathered to talk about our research and our interests, and through those conversations we expanded our networks and built supportive professional relationships.
Another highlight was the PdOC retreat, during which I travelled with fellow postdocs to the Peak District. We stayed in bunkhouses, explored the woodlands, made many new friends, and enjoyed a wonderful time together.
Of course, I also took part in various professional training sessions across different disciplines. One that I particularly remember was a bioinformatics workshop, where I learned valuable methods for using computational models to understand physiology and pharmaceutical development—skills that connected directly to my research.
Do you think it would be good to keep in touch with the Postdoc Academy?
Absolutely yes. The Postdoc Academy offers many valuable opportunities for interaction and networking. It provides professional training as well as regular chances to connect with peers and broaden your professional community. I think this is incredibly important.
As a postdoc, having just completed your PhD, you are often at a crossroads, exploring potential career paths and trying to decide on your next steps. The Postdoc Academy serves as a supportive space where you can meet people, exchange ideas, and open up new opportunities. I strongly recommend that postdocs in Cambridge actively engage with the Postdoc Academy.
What steps did you take to reach the position you are at now? How did you decide on this route?
That’s a great question, though not an easy one. I often think of Steve Jobs’ words: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.”
To me, this means that many things in life unfold naturally more than deliberately. There is an underlying logic, but it often reveals itself in retrospect. Looking back, what has brought me to where I am today is my continuous pursuit of my passion for modelling and theoretical development, especially in the context of sustainability.
There have been many obstacles along the way, but this passion has always carried me through, helping me overcome difficulties and continue moving forward.
What was the most useful bit of professional development you did that helped you to where you are? (an opportunity, training, a mentor?)
I would say that both the training opportunities and the mentorship were helpful. If I were to rank what supported me the most, I would place networking at the top, especially the chance to meet people from different fields.
The nature of my work differs from the conventional structure of chemistry, where the focus is typically centred on a specific substance, project, or disciplinary knowledge area. What I am trying to do requires a broad integration of insights across multiple fields. For instance, one major challenge with chemicals is their toxicity. Many chemicals exhibit unintended biological effects, not because this outcome is desired, but largely because of limited training in toxicology and insufficient understanding of toxic mechanisms. This gap in knowledge leaves the safety component missing in the chemical design puzzle. My work aims to help fill this gap by integrating knowledge from physics, chemistry, computing, and biology.
This means I often have to step well outside my comfort zone to learn biology and toxicology—and, most importantly, to connect them to chemistry. Understanding how chemistry principles, quantum mechanical descriptions, and molecular features translate into the likelihood of unintended biological consequences is at the core of my work. The true challenge lies in this integration and connection.
Cross-disciplinary conversations have been invaluable in this regard. Interacting with people from varied backgrounds allows me to see different perspectives and visions, and combining these insights often sparks creativity. My advice would be: don’t just narrow your focus, also broaden your horizons. Hold on to your technical core but always be open to exploring new and interesting ideas from other disciplines.
Creativity is essential when designing solutions. Problems that sit at the intersection of multiple disciplines rarely fit existing frameworks, which forces you to think outside the box. I find it genuinely exciting to tackle a challenging problem at this crossroads, to wrestle with it, and eventually resolve it. Moments like these are deeply rewarding and a true delight for me as a scientist and researcher.
Would you be interested in engaging with current postdocs?
I am more than happy to engage with postdocs on a broad scale. As I mentioned before, what matters most to me is interacting with people from different fields. I have learned a great deal from toxicologists, economists, computer scientists, social scientists, and psychologists.
While I naturally view problems through the lens of a chemist, incorporating perspectives from other disciplines greatly expands the dimensionality of my understanding and creates more space for innovation. For me, nothing is more stimulating than interacting with people from diverse backgrounds. I am definitely eager to continue collaborating and exchanging ideas with postdocs across disciplines.
What was your proudest achievement while a postdoc?
As a postdoc, my primary focus was research. One of my key achievements was developing a complete, elegant mathematical solution for the scenario of multi-strain viral evolution under immune pressure.
Why is this important? Experimental biologists in the lab aim to study these dynamics because, if feasible, it can save time and cost while also addressing critical biological questions that may not have been asked before. My role was to ensure that a mathematically tractable solution exists and to provide a framework that can guide their experiments.
At first glance, the problem seemed highly challenging. Then I recognized an underlying connection between this biological problem and chemical kinetics. Leveraging this insight was central to developing a complete solution. This work has the potential to reduce experimental costs significantly and to help experimenters ask, and answer, the more challenging and meaningful biological questions. This accomplishment is the one I am most proud of.
What would you suggest for postdocs who are interested in following a similar career path to you?
I would describe my career as quite individual. There’s a quote from Barack Obama: “If you like me, don’t be me.” My interpretation is that there is no one-size-fits-all path to career success. While aspects of my journey may be inspiring, the scenarios, environments, and societal contexts change for everyone. The key is to extract lessons relevant to your own development rather than trying to replicate someone else’s path.
What I would highlight in my own career is the way I follow my interests. As the saying goes, “Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.” For me, I strive for the first part: doing what I am genuinely interested in. This is not always easy, because it often requires combining multiple interests and tackling complex problems. However, this passion gives me the determination to keep moving forward.
I strongly believe that a sustainable future should be a priority for human development, and I want to contribute my knowledge and efforts toward that goal. To do so, I recognise that interdisciplinarity is essential. Over many years, academia has siloed disciplines, allowing deep development within each field. While this is effective for solving narrowly defined problems, it imposes limits when addressing complex, real-world challenges.
Take chemistry as an example. Creating new chemical products and substances, while attempting to modernise human life, often suffers from incomplete knowledge. To improve outcomes, we need a broader, integrated understanding rather than a narrow focus on a single area. My goal is to integrate the knowledge I have been exposed to, continually asking “why,” and to use my modelling capabilities to build innovative solutions. Doing something new is extremely important to me and achieving that requires drawing on insights from multiple domains.
If you could give your former self one piece of advice in your first year of being a postdoc, what would it be?
Looking back, I would say one of the most important things is to make full use of the resources available at the University. I migrated to the UK from the USA after completing my PhD there.
As a first-year, cross-continental researcher, I was unaware of many opportunities available at the time. For example, scholarships, funding, and other support programs were often overlooked. This is something I would advise anyone starting out to watch for, as early-career opportunities can be incredibly valuable.
The University also provides access to extensive resources, including libraries, seminars, and workshops. I found the Cambridge Seminar website particularly useful, as it integrates talks and events across departments. Attending these seminars greatly supported my career development by exposing me to diverse ideas and approaches.
Anyone coming to Cambridge is already accomplished in their field, and by actively exploring the resources and tackling new problems, you can quickly elevate your skills and perspective. If I were starting as a first-year again, I would make it a priority to explore and leverage everything the University has to offer.
In your current work, what are some of the main challenges of designing environmentally safer chemicals? Is it difficult to convince industry to take it up?
There are certainly challenges, but I would say the barriers are lower compared to when I began my career in this field as a PhD student. At that time, there was a famous saying: “the solution to pollution is dilution”. Today, thanks to education and growing global awareness of chemical biosafety, more people recognise these concerns, and there is increasing interest in driving change within industry.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I spoke with several professionals in the chemical industry and found that many were exploring ways to “green” their chemical processes. Their challenge lies in limited training, gaps in knowledge, and uncertainty about which direction to take. I can appreciate this perspective—chemistry traditionally follows a conventional path with well-established steps and pipelines, so implementing change is not easy.
Through these interactions, I sensed genuine interest and motivations in the industry to pursue new initiatives. At the same time, any changes must be carefully calculated to ensure they are meaningful not only from societal and public health perspectives but also economically viable.
So yes, challenges remain. Industry adoption takes time because of scale and established processes. However, I am hopeful that as more people, including myself, commit to sustainable chemistry, meaningful change will eventually occur.
Is there anything else you would like to mention?
I am innovation- and research-driven. I cannot settle with conventional tasks. I must continuously renew both my knowledge and my enthusiasm for research. This is something I hope to share with others, including my future peers.
To fuel your passion, it is crucial to focus on what truly matters to you. Attempting anything important or challenging requires time, patience, and preparation, and it is rarely easy.
For me, nothing is given for free. Progress depends on determination and the will to persevere. Achieving requires both practice and courage. In my experience, practice means integrating knowledge from different domains to expand your perspective and think creatively about solutions.
Overall, I would say: keep going, postdocs. Cambridge is an exceptional place. Make the most of it, identify the resources available to you, and maximise your potential as postdoctoral scholars as Cambridge.