R. Andrew Davies

Biography

Dr. Andrew Davies is a mutildiscilinary Welsh-Medium Lecturer in the School of Chemistry. Apart from developing the School's Welsh-Medium strategy and the National (Welsh-Medium) Development Plan for Chemistry, Andrew has instigated postgraduate Mathematics support for undergraduates and organises postgraduate facilitating within the undergraduate teaching laboratories. If you wish to book an appointment, please do so through Google Calendar. You may need to create a Google ID. My choice of studying Chemistry at Bangor was always intuitive due to fascinating fireworks/explosives lectures given annually by Dr. Donald Marshall. Studying mathematics as an accessory for two years, I was awarded the William Pritchard Entrance Scholarship, Morris Centenary Prize (1st year chemist), Evan Roberts Book Prize (best 2nd year chemist), Peboc Medal and Prize (best final year chemist), and the prestigious Dr. John Roberts Jones prize (best Welsh-Medium student at Bangor). I was also awarded the RSC William Briggs PhD Scholarship in an open competition for all UK universities. Although initially trained as an Experimental Organic Chemist under the supervision of Prof. Mark Baird, my flair for computational chemistry was apparent. In collaboration with CellPath, a series of organic dyes were modelled as potential replacements for those currently used in the Papanicolaou Cervical Smear test. A working knowledge of Density Functional Theory (DFT) was gained during a 3-month secondment to Accelrys Inc. in Orsay, France under the supervision of Prof. Nick Quirke and Dr. Erich Wimmer. Transition state structures and reaction energetics for pericyclic reactions involving cyclopropenes were probed.

Research Interest

My research reflects my multidisciplinary nature with interests in areas ranging from virtual reality to mathematics and materials and theoretical chemistries. Strong interdisciplinary links can be forged between experimental observations and theoretical predictions for materials chemistry and the life-science interfaces.