Email: clarissa.harman.17@ucl.ac.uk

Biography

In 2016, Clarissa graduated from the University of Sheffield having completed a Master’s degree in Chemistry, achieving a upper second-class degree. As part of her Master’s project Clarissa investigated the reactivity of rhodium-complexes, forging her passion for inorganic chemistry. As part of her degree, Clarissa studied for a year at the University of Adelaide and took the opportunity to explore Australia and surrounding countries. Since completing her undergraduate studies, Clarissa worked as a laboratory technician for the food company Apetito, ensuring the food produced was safe to consume with the correct nutritional value advertised. Following this, Clarissa volunteered for three months in Bangladesh as volunteer for VSO/ICS, working on improving the livelihood of vulnerable people.

Clarissa is a part of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Therapeutics and Nanomedicines programme based at UCL School of Pharmacy. She started her doctoral research in September 2017 with a short project investigating layered terbium nanoparticles potential for drug delivery, under the supervision of Dr Gareth Williams. Afterwards Clarissa did an industrial placement at AstraZeneca investigating the stability of amorphous materials, under the supervision of Dr James McCabe and Martin Kearns. Clarissa is now in her first year of her interdisciplinary PhD, under the supervision of Dr Stephan Guldin (AdReNa group, UCL Department of Chemical Engineering), Dr Gemma Davies (UCL Department of Chemistry), Dr Gareth Williams and Dr Sudax Murdan (UCL School of Pharmacy).

Research

Clarissa’s research will investigate nanoparticle-based micro-assemblies for encapsulation and precision release of target compounds. Clarissa will be using silica and iron oxide nanoparticles to encapsulate poorly soluble hydrophobic drugs, harnessing Pickering emulsions as an encapsulation method. Subsequently, she will investigate triggered release of these particles for drug delivery.

Publications

M. Strimaite, C.L.G. Harman, H. Duan, Y. Wang, G.-L. Davies, G.R. Williams, “Layered terbium hydroxides for simultaneous drug delivery and imaging”, Dalton Transactions, 2021, accepted. DOI

C.L.G. Harman, M.A. Patel, S. Guldin, G.-L. Davies*, “Recent Developments in Pickering Emulsions for Biomedical Applications”, Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science, 2019, 39, 173-189. Special issue: Outstanding Young Researchers. DOI

Funding

Clarissa’s PhD is supported by the EPSRC-sponsored Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Therapeutics and Nanomedicines and Quotient Sciences.