About Oliver Righton
I'm a chemist in my final year of the MChem with Industrial Placement programme at the University of St Andrews. My research focused on improvements to a Dye-Sensitised Solar Cell (DSSC) process used in the St Andrews undergraduate laboratory. For a brief overview, see my poster, or for a deeper dive you can read my research essay. My six week project was with _makesense Colombia and Picacho con futuro in Medellín to create socially innovative solutions to the challenges of sustainability and circular economy, designing and delivering workshops to understand what these concepts meant to the people and then to explore ways in which their lives intersect with the natural world.
Academic Interests
I'm currently researching solid-state materials including hexagonal tungsten bronzes and their structure-property relationships under selective doping. Outside of my research project, I'm also taking courses in catalysis, asymmetric synthesis and macromolecular bonding interactions. In my degree, I've also studied some astronomy and astrophysics - there's nothing like a good night looking at the stars!
Personal Interests
Outside of academic life, you'll find me always up for a board game (I was Secretary of a board game society once). I'm learning guitar, doing my best to pick French back up after a few years and have always been a great fan of cooking delicious food!
Recent Comments
It was a privilege to work with you for these six weeks and to learn (and to unlearn) together
I’ll be expecting your debut single by next year! It was a pleasure to work alongside you for these six weeks
The kayaking trip was a whole challenge to itself but you were so good!
Sounds like you’re having an amazing time! Best of luck with the funding plan!
A really interesting and accessible read!
A great translation of your results into a visual format, and looks like you've set up some good future work!
A thought-provoking essay both confronting the concept of heritage and coming up with a lens to view it, really interesting to read!
Some great work here, and not one, but two potential clusters identified! Do you think your method used here could be used for other regions of space?