Dr Andrew Cairns joined Imperial College London as Research Fellow in September 2017. Prior to Imperial he was a postdoctoral scientist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France on the high pressure beamline ID27. He was awarded his DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2015 in Inorganic Chemistry. 

His research focuses on understanding and exploiting unusual properties of flexible framework materials. Central to this work is the ability to reveal the atomic structure—how atoms are arranged in 3D space—using crystallography. Knowing the atomic structure allows us to design better materials, and push materials with unique properties towards application.