My name is Stuart McDonald, I’ve been working here in Amsterdam for Shell now for two years,
I grew up in Libya, North Africa, moving back to the UK for my studies. My background is
in Chemistry and I did my undergraduate in chemistry at Loughborough University, I did
a placement year in AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company, then I did my PhD for Frank Marken
at Bath University in Physical Chemistry.
That was over a three-year period and now I find myself here in Amsterdam working for
Shell. My job title in Shell is ‘Project Leader of Enhanced Experimentation’ which
is quite a broad term, to have on a card, but essentially it means allowing
R and D, research and development, to happen faster, to allowing more R and D processes,
so, it uses a combined set of tools, so from robotics and automation, high throughput experimentation,
fast analytical methods, computer modelling and databasing.
But the overall theme is to use these tools to allow researchers to get useful results
faster and the overall theme is allowing R and D to hit the market quicker to allow people’s
bright ideas to have an impact on the business faster. Part of doing things faster is doing
things in parallel, to get more results, you need to build more reactors. It’s much easier
to build one hundred of these in comparison. So one part of the job is looking at miniaturisation,
how do you take larger-scale processes and essentially the large-scale process of this
is a chemical refinery. So you’ve taken it down to this level, can you take it down
still further and have the same process occurring at a small scale. Build many of them and therefore
do many more tests and get more data for your process and eventually what that means is
your catalyst, or your chemical process will be developed faster. It’s working with chemists,
it’s working with engineers, it’s working with geologists, electrical engineers, analytical
chemists and in a wide range of areas within Shell, so at the moment there’s currently
running about fifteen projects, in fuels, in lubricants, in our oil sands operations,
in our geology operations, our exploration. It also involves going to look at opportunities
outside Shell, so looking at companies, for example specialists in robotics and automation,
outside Shell, so visiting companies, seeing what they can do and bringing their technology
inside Shell for our benefit.
So it’s kind of like technology-scouting and seeing if those concepts can work in the
energy industry. There’ve been projects in India, there’ve been projects in Canada,
in Houston in North America, in the UK, in Germany, and also the companies that I work
with are from different parts of the world as well. I get exposure to a lot of different
areas of technology in a lots of parts of the world, it’s a real interesting, fascinating
job because you can be at 9 o’clock in the morning on the phone with a computational
chemist in India, and then in the evening you’re on the phone with a geologist
in Houston. So literally, Friday afternoon I’m sitting in a chemistry lab in Bath,
finishing off my PhD and then on Monday I’m sitting here in Amsterdam, with the day-to-day
running of Enhanced Experimentation throughout Shell and it was just fantastic.