New Frontiers in Synthetic Chemistry 2020

Ross began his research career at The University of Nottingham, carrying out his PhD studies with Professor Jim Anderson. Following the completion of his doctoral research he moved to The Scripps Research Institute in California as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor K.C. Nicolaou. Returning to the UK he carried out further postdoctoral studies with Professor Steven Ley, CBE, FRS at Cambridge University. He returned to Nottingham to begin his independent research career in 2008 as a fixed term Lecturer in Organic Chemistry. In 2009 he was appointed to a Lectureship in Organic Chemistry. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2016 and to Professor of Organic Chemistry in 2020.

Professor Rebecca Goss FRSC, FRSE (born in 1976) grew up on the Isle of Man. She obtained her BSc in Chemistry from the University of Durham in 1997 and her PhD in 2001. Following a year and a half period as a postdoctoral research associate at Cambridge working between Chemistry and Biochemistry with Professor Jim Staunton FRS and Professor Peter Leadlay FRS (respectively), she moved to positions at the University of Nottingham, the University of Exeter and the University of East Anglia where she rose from Lecturer, Senior Lecturer to Reader. In 2012 Rebecca was appointed to a Readership then in 2018 to Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of St Andrews.
The Goss group have research interests in the biosynthesis of natural products at the chemical and genetic level. Specifically, our research focuses on natural products with important medicinal properties and in understanding how biosynthetically intriguing motifs within these compounds are assembled. From this vantage point we harness individual enzymes as convenient tools for organic synthesis, and employ a combination of synthetic chemistry and synthetic biology to harness entire biosynthetic pathways in order to enable expeditious access to libraries of medicinally relevant compounds. These libraries may be used to gain a greater understanding as to how the drug acts at the molecular level within the cell.

Mark Graham obtained his undergraduate degree then PhD under the supervision of Prof Chris Rayner at the University of Leeds. He joined AstraZeneca in 2001 and spent over 10 years in Oncology Medicinal Chemistry at Alderley Park, working on a wide range of drug discovery projects from hit identification to lead optimisation.
 
Following a secondment to process chemistry, he made the permanent move to become a process chemist within AstraZeneca's Global Chemical Development department at Macclesfield in 2014. Mark is currently a process chemist and project lead, working on route design, process design, and delivery of GMP manufacturing campaigns to provide supply of drug substance to projects in clinical development.

I completed my chemistry masters at the University of Liverpool from 2009, followed by 2 years on the AstraZeneca R&D Graduate Programme from 2013 and then started in my current role at AstraZeneca as a Medicinal Chemist in the Oncology Chemistry R&D group in 2015.

Following a PhD with Professor Knight in Cardiff University, Charlotte undertook a post doc with Professor Ley working in the Innovative Technology Centre. She moved to GSK to work in the Technology Development group looking at catch and release mechanisms to use flow chemistry for library synthesis. In 2007, Charlotte joined Astex as a medicinal chemist where she worked on many fragment based drug discovery programs. She still works as a medicinal chemist, but also chairs the Synthesis Technology Group at Astex.

Louis received his PhD from the University of St Andrews in 2014 under the direction of Prof. Andrew Smith and undertook postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley with Prof. Richmond Sarpong. In 2015, he initiated his independent research career at Cardiff University. Research in the group is focused on inventing new reactions in organic chemistry and developing sustainable catalytic methodologies for synthesis
 

Elaine O'Reilly was born and raised in Dublin and completed her degree in chemistry at University College Dublin (UCD) in 2006. She remained at UCD for her PhD studies under the direction of Prof. Francesca Paradisi, before moving to The University of Manchester to carry out postdoctoral research with Prof. Nicholas Turner. In 2014, she began her independent research career at Manchester Metropolitan University before moving to The University of Nottingham as Assistant Professor of Chemical Biology in 2015. In January 2019, she moved to her current position as Associate Professor of Chemical Biology at University College Dublin. Elaine's research focuses on the development of novel enzymes and methodologies that enable entirely new biocatalytic disconnections and her group focus on overcoming the challenges that hamper the widespread application biocatalysts. In 2017, her group’s research was recognised by the award of the RSC Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize.

Robert Phipps obtained his undergraduate degree from Imperial College, London in 2006 before moving to the University of Cambridge where he completed his PhD studies with Prof. Matthew Gaunt in 2010. He spent two years working with Prof. F. Dean Toste at UC Berkeley as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. In late 2014 he commenced his independent career at Cambridge as a Royal Society University Research Fellow. His research group is interested in applying non-covalent interactions to control regioselectivity and site selectivity in catalysis.

Stephen completed his MChem at Cardiff University working with Prof. Nick Tomkinson, and PhD with Dr Stuart Warren at the University of Cambridge. Postdoctoral work with Prof. Dr Andreas Pfaltz at the University of Basel, Switzerland, was shortly followed by a move to the University of Bristol to join Prof. Varinder Aggarwal FRS as his group Research Officer. In 2012 Stephen moved to the University of Edinburgh as a Chancellor’s Research Fellow and in 2014 he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. Stephen and the group have been awarded the 2016 RSC Hickinbottom Award, a Thieme Journal Award and a Pfizer Green Chemistry Research Award.

Allan obtained his MSc degree from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, where he continued for his PhD studies in organometallic methodology. He then moved to a postdoctoral fellow position at Princeton University working with Professor David W. C. MacMillan on natural product total synthesis. In 2010 he returned to the UK to an industrial postdoctoral position at GlaxoSmithKline and in 2011 started his independent career at the University of Strathclyde, moving to the University of St Andrews in January 2018. His research interests are based around the development of new catalytic processes and their application in medicinal chemistry and agrochemistry.