Marlow Award 2011 Winner

Awarded for her pioneering work in solid-state NMR, combining experiments and first principles calculations for the study of important materials.

About the Winner

Sharon Ashbrook graduated in Chemistry from Hertford College, Oxford, in 1997, obtaining a MChem (1st Class), before staying to study for her DPhil in the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford in the group of Professor Stephen Wimperis. She completed a thesis entitled "New NMR Techniques for the Study of Quadrupolar Nuclei", graduating in 2001. 

After postdoctoral research at the University of Exeter she became a Teaching Fellow in Mineral Physics at the at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge and in 2003, was awarded a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship which she held in Cambridge and, subsequently, in St Andrews. During this time she also held the Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellowship at Darwin College. From October 2005, she was appointed as an RCUK Academic Fellow in the School of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, and was promoted to Reader in 2009. 

Her research focuses on the application of multinuclear solid-state NMR techniques and, most recently, their combination with first-principles DFT calculations to investigate structure, disorder and dynamics in the solid state. Current interests include microporous framework materials, high-pressure silicates and ceramics for waste encapsulation. She was awarded the RSC Harrison Prize in 2004 for her contributions to solid-state NMR and, in 2009, the RSC/IOP Early Career Prize in Magnetic Resonance.