Dr Sam Parkinson

Dr Sam J Parkinson is a Tenure Track Research Fellow at Aston University, where he leads an independent research programme at the interface of polymer chemistry, automation, and data-driven materials discovery. His work focuses on developing self-driving laboratory platforms and automated reactor systems to accelerate the discovery of sustainable polymeric materials to replace petrochemical analogues. His research integrates robotics, machine learning, and high-throughput experimentation to enable scalable, reproducible discovery of sustainable polymeric materials. By combining controlled polymerisation techniques (including RAFT, ROP and ROMP) with advanced analytical characterisation and algorithm-guided optimisation, he aims to transform how functional materials are designed and developed. Dr Parkinson completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Leeds, specialising in controlled radical polymerisation, flow chemistry platform design, and machine learning for reaction optimisation. He subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the University of Birmingham and the University of Liverpool, where he worked on environmentally responsive polymeric systems and automated polymer synthesis.