Daisy Pooler, postdoc at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, is one of the recipients of the Chemistry Europe Travel Grant 2025, for which she was nominated by the Swedish Chemical Society (SCS, Svenska Kemisamfundet).
She will use the grant to undertake a research stay in the laboratory of Dr. Jake Greenfield at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
─ I will be there for two months, but I have already started performing computational calculations on the funky molecules we are going to make together, says Daisy Pooler.
The aim of the project is to develop a new type of molecular machines using imines — functional groups that contain a carbon–nitrogen double bond (C=N). These tiny machines can be switched on and off using light.
─ Jake works with imine photoswitches and I work with artificial molecular machines, so it made sense for us to bring the two fields together!
Imine-based motors currently require high-energy UV light. This limits their potential for practical applications, and the aim of Daisy Pooler’s research project in Scotland is to produce photoresponsive motors with red-shifted light-absorption properties. These would be more suitable for applications such as smart textiles or biological systems.
Daisy Pooler completed her PhD at the University of Groningen in the group of Prof. Ben Feringa, whose research on light-driven rotary molecular motors led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016. During her PhD, she worked on developing heterocyclic, light-driven molecular motors and succeeded in making them operate using visible light.
After her PhD, Daisy Pooler became a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Fredrik Schaufelberger’s group at KTH, where she has worked on developing photoresponsive molecular machines for biomedical applications.
Daisy Pooler’s next goal is to establish her own research group in Sweden, and she hopes that the project in Scotland will lead to interesting collaborations in the UK.
─ I would like to express my gratitude to the selection committee at Svenska Kemisamfundet, particularly Prof. Ola Wendt, for their support and for funding my project. It’s my first funding as a completely independent scientist, so I am very excited about it!