Dr Ruth Webster

Ruth is an Assistant Professor of Synthetic Chemistry, based at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. A homogeneous catalysis chemist, her interests lie in unusual phosphorus motifs and also in the chemistry of iron, and how to harness the potential of this inexpensive Earth abundant metal for use in atom efficient chemical bond transformations. She has a particular interest in reaction mechanisms and has been awarded the RSC Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship, the Philip Leverhulme Prize and the AstraZeneca Prize in Synthetic Chemistry for her work in this area. Ruth is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde (MSci, 2007) and University of Bristol (PhD, 2011) and was awarded a Commonwealth Research Fellowship to undertake postdoctoral research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. In 2012 she started her independent career at the University of Bath before moving to Cambridge in 2023.