Personal Statement
Dr John Ward is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. He obtained his PhD from the University of Manchester in 2010, before holding postdoctoral positions at the University of Edinburgh (2010–2014) and the University of Bristol (2014–2018). He then joined the Leverhulme Research Centre for Functional Materials Design at the University of Liverpool as a Research Fellow and Theme Leader (2018–2022), before taking up a Lectureship in Chemistry in 2023. His research group develops digital and automated approaches to address key challenges in organic synthesis and catalysis. By integrating laboratory automation with data-driven and machine-learning methods, his work aims to accelerate reaction development, process optimisation, and catalyst discovery.