Research Fellow, School of Chemistry
What is your research background and current field of research?
I completed my PhD at the University of Bath, where I first engaged in scientific software development by creating packages to model defects in functional materials. I then worked as a postdoctoral researcher within the Faraday Institution, using simulations to explore novel materials for lithium-ion battery applications. I am now a group leader under Professor David Scanlon in the School of Chemistry at the University 麻豆精选, where we focus on predicting and modelling the properties of energy materials.
Which BEAR Services have been most helpful to you in your research?
BlueBEAR, the Research Data Store (RDS), and Tier-2 HPC resources provided via BEAR are indispensable to our daily research as a group. The extensive GPU access through Baskerville, BlueBEAR, and Sulis is fairly unique at Birmingham and significantly accelerates our density functional theory calculations.
How widespread do you think BEAR Services are known in your School and how do you plan to spread the word?
The computational chemistry faculty is expanding rapidly, and with this growth comes increased demand for BEAR services, but the entire school relies on resources such as the RDS. I’d like to act as an advocate for digital chemistry and want to raise awareness of the full range of BEAR offerings—especially the training and RSE provisions—to ensure these resources are utilised to their fullest potential.
How can researchers in your School/College contact you?
I can be reached via my university email: a.squires@bham.ac.uk
What's an interesting fact about you?
My love of software development goes beyond my work. I spend a lot of my time coding and have been involved in digital skills outreach initiatives, such as the Raspberry Pi Foundation's CoderDojo, teaching school-age children Python and HTML.