Katherine Holt

Early life and education Holt was born in the United Kingdom. Her parents were both chemistry teachers and she grew up around chemistry textbooks. She worked as a Centenary Ramsay Fellow. She was appointed an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council advanced research fellow in 2006 and a lecturer at University College London in 2007.

Holt's research investigates the use of chemistry to better understand biological processes. She has shown that boron-doped and nanocrystalline diamond can be grown on metals using chemical vapor deposition, creating highly conductive thin films that can be used to detect metabolic products of living cells. She has studied diamond nanoparticles, which may find application in drug delivery and cellular imaging. Holt showed that diamond can be redox active, a surprising observation given diamond has a bandage of 5.47 eV and is generally considered an insulator. Instead, Holt believes that the redox properties of diamond originate in unsaturated surface bonds, as these interactions can dominate when nanoparticle size is < 5 nm.

Selected publications

Awards and honours Holt was awarded the Edward Harrison Memorial Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in 2007.