In 2005 he was awarded a 5 year tenure track Research Councils UK (RCUK) Academic Fellowship in materials discovery and was appointed lecturer in inorganic chemistry at Liverpool in 2010. In 2010 he was the recipient of a prestigious 5 year European Research Council (ERC) starting grant for a project titled ‘Biomineral-inspired growth and processing of metal-organic frameworks: BIOMOF’ to develop strategies to process MOFs into application-specific configurations and composites, including the use of biological macromolecules and matrices to confine growth, increase solubility and enhance biocompatibility of this important class of porous solids. In summer 2012 he joined the school of chemistry at the University of Southampton as a Reader in Functional Materials.