Russell obtained his MChem degree from the University of Oxford in 2002. His Part II project was conducted under the supervision of Professor Tony Downs working on GaN MOCVD precursors. Immediately afterwards, he spent a year working as an Assistant Forensic Toxicologist at the Forensic Science Service. In 2003 he embarked on an industrially funded (CASE) PhD at Imperial College London (sponsored by BP) under the supervision of Dr. George Britovsek. Russell’s PhD focussed on platinum mediated, homogeneous methane oxidation. After spending a year in the group of Professor Vernon Gibson as a Research Associate, Russell joined BP in 2008 working at the R&D centre at the BP Chemicals manufacturing site in Hull. His research at BP initially focussed on homogeneous catalysis before he moved into the Acetyls Research Group (ARG) and began working on the recently announced syngas to acetic acid process (SaaBreTM). Within ARG Russell worked on heterogeneous catalyst characterisation and post-mortem analysis, by-product analysis, and product quality and cleanup. In September 2015, Russell began his independent research career, taking up a position as Lecturer in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry at Durham University.

Alkane Upgrading Biomass Conversion Heterogeneous Catalysis Multifunctional Materials Surface Organometallic Chemistry