By 
Assistant Professor in Inorganic Chemistry
School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University
http://www.mansellresearch.org.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 131 451 4299 s.mansell@hw.ac.uk
Since September 2013, I have been an assistant professor in the Institute of Chemical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. I attended the 2014 Scottish Crucible, which was great timing as my lab was being refurbished at the time. Scottish Crucible was an excellent experience in meeting new people, discovering different areas of research and allowing yourself the time to develop a longer-term focus for your career and research ambitions. As part of a team, I was awarded a grant from the Scottish Crucible to develop outreach activities using 3D printing. I took this opportunity to demonstrate 3D printing at the Dunbar Science Festival (Scifest) and the Midlothian Science Festival as well as helped to display Heriot-Watt’s expertise in 3D printing at the 2016 Opening of the Scottish Parliament. One action can trigger others, and this programme of outreach has been hugely beneficial in engaging chemistry PhD students with outreach, and they have since developed their own programme of outreach which has gone from strength-to-strength.
Scottish Crucible has also aided my research programme because it helped me establish a collaboration with Dr Stuart Robertson (Scottish Crucible 2014). We have since worked together on a joint project carried out by an ERASMUS student that resulted in a publication (J. Organomet. Chem., 2018, 857, 101) which then subsequently led to a successful grant application to the Carnegie Trust (project starting April 2018). The Scottish Crucible was an important experience at the beginning of my research career, and I have since achieved successful grant applications with the EPSRC and the Leverhulme Trust, as well as published papers in the field of catalysis, which is my area of expertise.
Latest Publication:
R. J. Newland, A. Smith, D. M. Smith, N. Fey, M. J. Hanton and S. M. Mansell, Accessing Alkyl- and Alkenylcyclopentanes from Cr-Catalyzed Ethylene Oligomerization Using 2‑Phosphinophosphinine Ligands Organometallics, 2018, 37, 1062−1073
