Dr Adam Clayton comes from Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, and completed an MChem in Chemistry at the University of Huddersfield in 2016. He was then awarded an AstraZeneca CASE studentship to study a PhD with Professor Richard Bourne at the University of Leeds, working on the development of multiobjective self-optimising continuous flow reactors. He received his PhD in 2020 and then joined the Institute of Process Research and Development as a postdoctoral researcher to continue developing autonomous workflows for process optimisation. During this position he established new digital approaches to accelerate pharmaceutical process development and integrated these technologies within the labs of multiple industrial collaborators.

Dr Clayton was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship in 2022 to investigate the ‘Autonomous Development of Telescoped Catalytic Reactions’ at the University of Leeds, where he has been an Associate Professor of Digital Chemistry since 2024. His research interests are focused on developing efficient and more sustainable multistep processes in continuous flow, principally for small molecule synthesis. To achieve this he designs and utilises machine learning algorithms to guide experimental campaigns performed on autonomous reactor platforms. Dr Clayton is also the Programme Manager for the MSc in Digital and Automated Chemistry course at the University of Leeds.