James received his B.A. from the University of Cambridge in 2017, where he studied Natural Sciences, with a focus on chemistry. He then completed an M.Sc. by research at the University of York in 2018, supervised by Dr. Victor Chechik. In 2019 he started his doctoral studies at ETH Zürich, as part of the deMello group, in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences in the lab of Dr. Josep Puigmarti-Luis. In August 2020, he moved to the University of Barcelona as part of the ChemInFlow group to continue his research, remaining a doctoral candidate at ETH, and co-supervised by Prof. Andrew deMello, Prof. Josep Puigmartí-Luis and Dr. Alessandro Sorrenti. He completed his doctorate in December 2023, and began working as a postdoc in the ChemInFlow group in 2024.
During his MSc project, his work focussed on studying the host–guest chemistry of coordination cages using EPR spectroscopy. By introducing stable nitroxide radical species as guests inside the cages and observing differences between the EPR signals of bound and unbound guest molecules, information about the binding environment of the cages, and the host-guest interactions between the cages and radical species, could be determined.
His doctoral research involved the investigation and development of non-equilibrium approaches to control the self-assembly of functional supramolecular systems. This work involved a combination of synthetic chemistry and chemical engineering – designing and synthesising building blocks for hierachical self-assembly, and fabricating and building microfluidic devices and setups to enable controlled addition of chemical fuels and reagents to supramolecular systems.
As a postdoctoral researcher, James’ current work is focussed on developing and using microfluidic devices and techniques to gain control over the self-assembly of molecular building blocks, and for triggering crystallisation processes.
