Merel Lefferts

Materials Scientist

I’ve always been interested in combining physics and chemistry, and in the area of small scale phenomena where physics and chemistry meet. I did my undergraduate at University College Utrecht (Utrecht University, the Netherlands), where I focussed on physics and chemistry. I then did a masters in the physics of nanomaterials at Utrecht University (the Netherlands). After my masters I moved to Oxford to do a DPhil in materials. This is when I started working on vapour sensors. For this research we use a combination of concepts and methods from physics, chemistry, and materials science to develop very small, very sensitive sensors to detect a range of different vapours.