Originally from Oxfordshire, I began my MChem degree at the University of Oxford in 2014. In 2016, I carried out a summer project with Prof. Andrew Goodwin investigating negative thermal expansion in flexible cyanide frameworks. I then stayed in the group for my Master’s degree project, co-supervised by Dr Hamish Yeung, where I studied the formation and compositional heterogeneity of metal–organic frameworks. During my time at Balliol College, I was awarded the Andrew Pang Scholarship for three consecutive years.
In 2018, I began my PhD at the University of Cambridge in the Hybrid Materials Group within the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, where I was funded by the EPSRC and Johnson Matthey. My thesis focused on extreme disorder in metal–organic frameworks.
My project involved studying the relationships between atomic structure, physical properties and formation mechanisms of highly disordered metal–organic frameworks. This combined understanding enables us to design and build the next generation of disordered catalysts, sorbents and battery materials.
During my PhD, I had the pleasure of learning from many great collaborators including total scattering from Prof. David Keen, electron microscopy from Dr Sean Collins, gas sorption from Prof. Shane Telfer and computational modelling from Prof. Kim Jelfs.
In 2022, I moved to Denmark as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen working with Associate Prof. Kirsten Jensen. Here, I am studying the formation of metal oxide clusters in solution using a combination of in-situ synchrotron techniques.
In 2023, I was awarded the Malvern PANalytical PhD thesis prize in Physical Crystallography.
Adam Sapnik 