Thomas Bennett

Tom was born in South Shields, in the North-East of England, in 1986.  He read the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge, specialising in Chemistry and gaining a 1st class MSci (Hons) in 2008. He then moved across to the Materials Science and Metallurgy Department, to study the physical properties of porous hybrid frameworks under Professor Anthony Cheetham FRS.

A  3 year Research Fellowship at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge followed, alongside lecturing some of the 1B Materials Chemistry course at the department. He started a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2016, along with a visiting adjunct professor position at The Wuhan University of Technology and a visiting scientist position at CSIRO Melbourne. The research group is best known for the discovery of hybrid melt-quenched glasses, and seminal works exploring the interface of the coordination polymer, MOF and glass domains. The group have considerable expertise in the characterisation of amorphous solids and liquids, and in creating new classes of functional material. For a taste of the research performed by the group, have a look at Tom’s plenary lecture at the International MOF Conference in 2022, available on youtube.

In his career to date, Tom has been fortunate enough to receive the EPSRC post-doctoral prize (2012), the Panalytical award for an outstanding contribution to X-ray diffraction (2013), the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Science Impact Award (2018), the Woldemar A. Weyl award for glass science (2019), the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Chemistry (2019), the Royal Society of Chemistry Harrison Meldola Memorial Prize (2020) and the Chemical Communications Lectureship (2021).

He has spent research stays in both the University of Kyoto (hosted by Prof. Susumu Kitagawa and Prof. Satoshi Horike), the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (hosted by Prof. Paul Kruger), and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (hosted by Prof. Dr. Lothar Wondraczek). He has served as both vice-Chair of the International Zeolite Association Commission on MOFs (2019 – 2022), and inaugural chair of the Royal Society of Chemistry Interest Group on Porous Materials (2019-2022). The committee were awarded the inspirational committee award by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2021. This was for admitting over 300 members as the RSC’s newest interest group, and organisation of events during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He was promoted to Professor in 2023, and joined the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2024. In a related sentence, Tom loves photography, hiking and river crossings. In his spare time, he can often be found camping with his energetic dog, Albie, which is a Springer-Collie cross.