Spotlight Feature – Dan Olsen

Doctoral Researcher

Loughborough University

I am a multidisciplinary organic chemist working with Steve Christie and Jonathan Wagner in the field of organic flow photochemistry. My research concerns the abstraction of strong aliphatic C-H bonds via UV-active photocatalysts for late-stage functionalisation of bio-based waste products. My primary focus has concerned flow photochemistry which offers many advantages over batch including increased light penetration leading to faster reactions, adaptable reaction conditions, autonomous reaction set-up and in-situ reaction monitoring. In collaboration with Plastic Energy™, I am coupling two waste streams from plastic pyrolysis and organic bio-based streams to generate value-added products in order to help close the circular economy loop.

More recently, I have been exploring the design and optimisation of experiments to increase reaction efficiency and throughput to gain further insight into the RDS of reaction and product formation.