skip to content

Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry

 
Ruth Webster in an NMR laboratory

Ruth Webster in the NMR laboratory taken by Nathan Pitt ©University of Cambridge

It’s been a year since Dr Ruth Webster and her group came to our department from the University of Bath. Discover Ruth’s mission is to find sustainable catalysts that speed up essential chemical reactions.

While many industrial catalysts rely on rare and expensive precious metals, Ruth has set her sights on iron, one of the most abundant metals on Earth.

Ruth explains: “I want to change the way we think about manipulating materials by using iron. Iron is the most abundant metal so using it as a catalyst is important for precious metal conservation.”

Catalysts are the workhorses of chemistry, pushing reactions to happen more quickly without being consumed themselves in the process. They are essential for producing chemicals on an industrial scale but often have an environmental cost in mining or transport. The Webster group’s research into more sustainable catalysts could help reduce the carbon footprint of some chemical production.

New facilities, new chemistry

Ruth and her group regularly use the department’s cutting-edge NMR facilities for their research. Because iron can be a tricky material to study with NMR, they work closely with the NMR team.

“Iron doesn’t behave like a normal metal,” explains Ruth: “A standard NMR scan won’t give us the full picture of what is happening inside iron because of unpaired electrons emitting erratic signals. The department’s broad range NMR scans of iron are unconventional and thorough and wouldn’t be possible without the remarkable facilities and amazing NMR team.”

Catalysts for pharmaceuticals

One project Ruth’s group is focusing on is how to use iron to produce amines, which are essential building blocks in the pharmaceutical industry. Amines are used in many drugs, such as antihistamines, decongestants and tranquilisers. Synthesising amines is an essential process for industry and greener catalysts could have an impact on how they are made. Ruth was recently awarded the AstraZeneca prize for her work in iron catalysis.

Ruth’s team also works alongside computational chemists, who use the NMR data to feed machine learning models. This partnership, funded by GlaxoSmithKline, is helping accelerate discoveries that could make a real-world impact on industrial processes. The goal? To design products that can scale from the lab bench to full industrial application – all while reducing environmental harm.

From Glasgow

Ruth studied chemistry as an undergraduate at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and completed her PhD in synthetic chemistry at the University of Bristol.

Ruth says: “Catalysis made the most sense to me as a student. I loved how it required figuring out which bonds are made and broken. The challenge comes from how quickly these reactions happen.”

After postdoctoral stints and her first independent position at the University of Bath, Ruth and her  group have settled happily into the department. The move marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter, not just for Ruth’s research but for the department as well.

 

This article was originally published in Chem@Cam magazine Issue 69.