I am a qualified pharmacist and PhD candidate investigating the relationship between the mechanical properties and crystal structures of selected active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

My research involves solvent- and thermally based screening approaches to identify and explore the solid-state landscape of industrially relevant APIs. The experimental techniques employed include watch-glass evaporation, cooling crystallisation, anti-solvent crystallisation, slurry conversion, hot-stage microscopy, contact preparation and isomorphic seeding. A range of analytical techniques, including powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), infrared (IR) spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), solution calorimetry, hot-stage microscopy (HSM), gravimetric sorption analysis (GSM) and Karl Fischer titration (KF), are employed for the characterisation of the investigated solid forms.

My work also encompasses humidity- and temperature-dependent stability studies, as well as the determination of the thermodynamic stability of different anhydrates. Mechanical characterisation of the APIs is carried out using Heckel analysis. Computational methods are used in parallel to support the interpretation of the observed mechanical behaviour and to correlate it with structural features. These include periodic DFT-based geometry optimisation using CASTEP, as well as crystal-packing and intermolecular-interaction analyses using CrystalExplorer and Mercury.