Clarissa joined the University of Leeds in 2019, after obtaining a MSc in Chemistry from the University of Nottingham. She graduated with a PhD in Chemical and Process Engineering in 2023, where her thesis was on the development of artificially intelligent reactors for precision polymer synthesis, under the supervision of Dr Nick Warren and Prof. Richard Bourne. This work focussed on the derivation of a novel explicit model for dispersity as a function of conversion based on the mechanistic modelling of Reversible Addition-Fragmentation Chain Transfer (RAFT) Polymerisation. This was then used to direct an autonomous self-optimising platform to further reduce the cost and waste of the optimisation process.  She has since gained 11 months post-doctoral research within Dr Nick Warren’s Group, developing an autonomous continuous flow platform capable of performing hazardous but industrially relevant polymerisations, in collaboration with Infineum. Currently, she is working as a research fellow, on the “DigiScale” EPSRC grant, where she aims to make use of her understanding of kinetic modelling and machine learning to identify important rate parameters for the synthesis of APIs, towards a digital twin.