Profile
Aoibhinn Downes
-
About Me:
I am a PhD student in UCD 👩🔬. Outside of that I play social tag rugby and am currently training for a half marathon 🏃♀️. I love watching greys anatomy and the vampire diaries.
-
My pronouns are:
She/her
-
My Work:
I work in synthetic organic chemistry. Which really means I spend my time mixing specific chemicals together hoping that they will make interesting new compounds.
-
Read more
I make compounds called ligands- these are compounds that when mixed with metals will form bonds with the metal. When these ligands and metals come together they can catalyse reactions which means the rate of the reaction will increase. Along with increasing the rate of reactions, these ligands can increase the amount of the product you to want to form over byproducts(other products that you don’t want).
-
My Typical Day:
My typical day starts by arriving to the office at 9:30 and having a coffee and quick catch up with my lab mates while I read any emails I have gotten that morning. After that I will go into the lab and put on a reaction- this involves finding the right container usually a round bottom flask, and weighing out everything you need and adding them all together and placing them in the flask then you add a solvent ( liquid that dissolves the chemicals you added). I then go to lunch with my friends. After lunch I will usually go back to the lab and take off a reaction and look at the results of it a.k.a. Checking the purity and yield which we have many ways of doing. I then go home at 5.30.
-
My Interview