Melanie is currently a senior lecturer in physical chemistry in the School of Chemistry, Birmingham University.
She has over 15 years experience of developing MRI and pulsed field gradient (PFG) experiments to probe chemistry and molecular motion in complex systems. She received a BSc in Chemistry from the University of London (Royal Holloway College) in 1989. In 1992 she completed her PhD on 13C NMR relaxation studies of model traction fluids at the University of Surrey, under the supervision of Prof. Les Sutcliffe and Dr Duncan Gillies. Following her PhD, she worked with Prof Sir Paul T Callaghan FRS as a postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) at Massey University, New Zealand, followed by a PDRA with Prof Ken J Packer FRS, at Nottingham University. During these PDRA positions, she developed MRI velocity visualisation techniques to probe the rheology of complex fluids, leading to an understanding of the molecular dynamics that underpinned their non-linear rheology, and the study of transport in porous media. In 2000, Melanie was awarded an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship (GR/A00575/01) to study the visualisation of chemical waves and pattern formation using MRI, working first in the Magnetic Resonance Research Centre at Cambridge University (Chemical Engineering) and then Birmingham University where she established an her MRI laboratory.
