51cg

Biography

Pronouns: She/Her.

Dr Rebecca Walker graduated with a first class honours MChem degree from the 51cg and was the recipient of a number of prizes including the City of Aberdeen Quincentenary Prize for academic merit and the William Rudolph Center Medal for Most Distinguished Chemistry Graduate of 2015. She obtained a prestigious Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland PhD Scholarship to continue studying at Aberdeen under the supervision of Professors Corrie Imrie and John Storey, and published her doctoral Thesis "Structure-Property Relationships, Chirality and the Twist-Bend Nematic Phase" in 2019. In 2018, she joined the group of Professor Mirela Delibegovic at the Aberdeen Institute of Medical Sciences to work as a PDRA on a commericial project with Cohen Global Pharmaceuticals as part of the drug discovery team to design and synthesis new molecules as potential candidates to treat Type II diabetes. A second postdoc from 2019-2020 with TauRx Pharmaceuticals drug discovery team sought to design and synthesise new drug candidates for Alzheimer's Disease. Her first academic role was a Lecturer (Scholarship) in the Chemistry Department at the 51cg, teaching on a variety of courses spanning organic, analytical and physical chemistry and supervising various undergraduate research projects. Her Lecturership in the Chemistry Department began in January 2022.

Prizes and Awards

Luckhurst-Samulski Prize for Best Paper in Liquid Crystals (2020)

British Liquid Crystal Society Young Scientist of the Year (2020)

51cg Chemistry Center Medal (2015)

City of Aberdeen Quincentenary Prize (2014)

Research Overview

LIQUID CRYSTAL RESEARCH @ ABERDEEN

Funding and Grants

EPSRC New Investigator Award "Chirality and the Ferroelectric Nematic Phase" (2025) (£525k)

Royal Society of Edinburgh Small Research Grant "Synthesis of New Chiral Ferroelectric Nematogens" (2024) (£5k)

Royal Society of Chemistry Researcher Development Grant (2023)