About
Frédéric obtained his PhD in Chemistry in 2008 from the Université de Lyon and the Center for High Field NMR at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, under the supervision of Prof. Christophe Copéret and Prof. Lyndon Emsley. He studied the structure - dynamics relationship in heterogeneous catalysis and developed new solid state NMR methods to understand the chemistry of catalysts on surfaces. He then received a Lavoisier fellowship and underwent postdoctoral work at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, NY in 2008-2010 with Prof. Clare P. Grey, where he got interested in the understanding of the structure elucidation of energy materials with NMR spectroscopy. He then moved to the University of Cambridge as a Marie Curie fellow in 2011 and a Clare Hall research fellow and looked at the dynamics of oxygens and protons in electrolytes by high temperature NMR spectroscopy.
In December 2012, he was appointed to a Lectureship in the Department of Chemistry and the Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy at the University of Liverpool and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2016, Reader in 2018 and to a Personal Chair in October 2021. where he is focusing on the development and application of NMR spectroscopy in materials chemistry. Frédéric's work aims at developing atomic scale structure – property correlations in complex functional materials for a diverse range of applications ranging from energy storage and conversion to catalysis that are captured from chemical processes understanding, most importantly how materials fail, and informed the design of new materials with improved performance and lifetime. The research methodology largely focuses on the development of new experimental and computational methods targeting advanced magnetic resonance spectroscopy capabilities to provide singular insights linking atomic scale understanding with dynamics behaviours to control chemical function. Recent work has focused on enhancing the NMR signal of unreceptive nuclei such as 17O at natural abundance or 89Y, on understanding complex disorder in solids that are uniquely captured by magnetic resonance and large scale modelling, and on exploiting the ability of NMR to probe dynamics to investigate a range of solid state ion transport materials identifying diffusion pathways. Further details can be found in the group website at http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~fblanc/WebsiteLiverpool/Home.html
Prizes or Honours
- BRSG - NMRDG Annual Prize for Excellent Contribution to Magnetic Resonance. (Institute of Physics - Royal Society of Chemistry, 2017)
- Fellow (Higher Education Academy, 2016)
- SFTC Early Career Award (SFTC, 2015)
- Finalist of the 2nd Youth Scientist Award (International Solid State Ionics Society, 2013)
Funded Fellowships
- Dynamic Nuclear Polarisation enhanced NMR from Paramagnetic Metal Ions (Leverhulme Trust, 2021 - 2024)
- Faraday Institution Early Career Fellowship Travel Grant (Faraday Institution, 2019 - 2020)
- Marie Curie Research Fellow (EU FP7, 2011)
- Clare Hall Research Fellowship (Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, 2011)
- Lavoisier Research Fellow (French Foreign Office, 2008)