Catriona completed her MChem at the University of Aberdeen in 2018 and was awarded the David Christie Memorial Prize for the best undergraduate research for her work on twist-bend nematic liquid crystals undertaken during a 6 month Erasmus placement at the University of Warsaw.
Following this, Cat began a PhD in 2018 at the University of Liverpool, supervised by Professor Matt Rosseinsky and Dr John Claridge. Here she studied a range of different perovskite families using x-ray and neutron diffraction to investigate subtle structural changes that controlled the observed properties. These included ionic conductors, magnetic structure analysis, and piezoelectric properties in relaxor ferroelectrics. Cat was also an avid science communicator during her MChem and PhD, and often took part in outreach events and hosted events such as Pint of Science 2022.
In 2023, Cat joined the Senn and Walton groups to further her understanding of symmetry-based crystallographic approaches. Her work will investigate the interplay between Jahn-Teller distortions and cation size effects on the magnetic and structural phase transitions in fluoride perovskites.