About the Organic Chemistry Community

At Durham he progressed to Professor developing research interests in natural products biosynthesis and organo-fluorine chemistry. He remained at Durham until 2000 before moving to his current position at the School of Chemistry, and where he is also associated with the Biomedical Sciences Research Centre (BSRC). He was elected FRSE in 2004 and served as Head of School at St Andrews from 2014-2018.

Professor O’Hagan was a founding member and a past Chair of the RSC Fluorine Group and he has received a number of Awards including the IChemE, 'Judges Award' for fluorinase enzyme isolation in 2002, the RSC Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize in Medicinal Chemistry in 2005, the RSC Tilden Medal in 2006/2007, the RSC 'Natural Product Reports Award' Lecturer in 2009, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award for 'Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry' in 2012 and the RSC Organic Stereochemistry Award in 2015.

In 2018 he was the recipient of the triennial Prix Moissan awarded by the Fondation de la Maison de la Chime in Paris for contributions to fluorine chemistry.

In 2002 she was awarded the Bronze Medal from the CNRS, and the following year she was promoted to Directrice de Recherche and obtained a teaching position at the Ecole Polytechnique. In 2009, she was appointed to the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include the total synthesis of bioactive natural products and the development of new methodologies in organic chemistry. Recently, she has been developing new methods for the post-polymerisation functionalisation of polymers of very diverse natures.

Matilda’s early career was spent working in CNS therapeutic areas where her research focussed on design strategies for getting small molecule therapeutics across the blood brain barrier. More recently as Head of Research and Operations at Redx Pharma she was involved in the discovery and development of oncology and fibrosis clinical and pre-clinical candidates, including the porcupine inhibitor RXC004 and BTK inhibitor LOXO-305.

She is currently VP Medicinal Chemistry & Site Director at Concept Life Sciences overseeing multiple medicinal chemistry programmes in Hit-to-Lead and Lead Optimisation. Throughout her research Matilda has been an advocate for organic synthesis and its lynchpin role in the success of drug discovery programmes. 

Matilda is a member of the SCI fine chemicals group and has authored over 40 papers, patents and publications including the RSC book “Drug Discovery for Psychiatric Disorders”. 

He completed his Ph.D. in 2010 and then began work at the University of York, first as a postdoctoral research associate in the group of Prof. Richard Taylor, before being appointed to a Research and Teaching Fellowship in 2013. In 2015 Will was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship to develop new procedures to synthesise functionalised macrocycles and is now the holder of the inaugural Eleanor Dodson Fellowship at the University of York.

His current research interests include ring expansion approaches for the synthesis of medium-sized rings and macrocycles, the construction of diverse spirocyclic scaffolds and catalyst selective synthesis. Will won the 2018 RSC Hickinbottom Award for his work on spirocycles and macrocycles. Will now lives in York with his wife Hayley and two children Billy and Catherine.

Adrian is originally from Kent and studied chemistry at King's College London, obtaining a BSc (1992) and PhD (1996), the latter under the supervision of Professor Keith Jones. He then spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Istvan Markó at the Université catholique de Louvain, in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

On returning to the UK, he joined the process development group of GSK (Tonbridge, Kent) before leaving to take up his first academic post at the Open University in 1999, where a passion for lifelong learning and opportunities for all was nurtured. A move to the University of Exeter soon followed (2001). Upon the closure of the Department in Exeter in 2005, he was appointed as Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London (2006-2012) and then Chair of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Greenwich (2013-2022), including serving as Head of the School of Science between 2018-2022. He took his current position, as Head of the School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering at the University of Surrey in March 2022.  He was awarded the RSC Inspirational Member Award in 2015.  His research interests are in heterocyclic chemistry, synthetic electrochemistry and medicinal chemistry of asbestos-induced diseases.

Dorcas' research interest is in synthesis and natural product chemistry, and recently she has been delving into metabolomics and biotechnology aspects.

She fosters and encourages ongoing research in aspects of organic chemistry that support anti-aging and immune boosting drives. She is interested in studies of phytochemical and essential oils in lesser known Nigerian medicinal and fruit plants and the possibility of drug discovery.

Professor Olufunke has, to her credit, over 55 publications in national and international journals. She is a member of a number of professional associations including RSC, the Chemical Society of Nigeria (CSN), SEODAN, and the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD).

Her Professorship (backdated to 2018) was announced in November 2022. Dorcas is passionate about changes leading to meaningful ways to support her professional aspirations, yielding and leading to progress and empowerment of her learners; hence she supports the inclusion and diversity vision of RSC.

Dorcas has been the Liaison Officer for the students’ body SCSN, where she coordinates and mentors undergraduates and postgraduates. She is a regular attendant of RSC AGMs, webinars and global events including GWB, and receives RSC newsletters. She is happily married with children, dogs and parrots! She loves swimming, skipping, music and plays the piano, organ and guitar.

He obtained his BSc(Hons) and PhD degrees in Chemistry from the University of Glasgow. He then took up a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Montreal working with Prof. William Lubell. In 2008 Andrew joined the lab of Prof. Andrew Hamilton FRS at Yale University and then the University of Oxford. He then joined the faculty at the University of Leicester in 2010.

In 2016 Andrew moved to the University of Glasgow as a Senior lecturer and was promoted to Reader in 2019 and Professor in 2022. He leads a research group focused on small molecules, peptides and peptidomimetics that can be used to probe the biological mechanisms underpinning disease.

In June 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.

She obtained a PhD in 1991 under the supervision of Professor Gordon Kirby at the University of Glasgow. She worked as a Research Fellow under Professor Sir Jack Baldwin at the Dyson-Perrins Laboratory at the University of Oxford (1993-1995). In 1996, she moved to Cranfield University where she started her independent academic career as a lecturer. She moved to Sheffield in 2003 and was promoted to professor in 2014. 
 
Since 2003, she has led prion chemical biology research at Sheffield, working on developing small molecule tools to understand the role of prion protein (PrPC) in stem cell biology (Chemistry) and neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s disease and vCJD) and cancer. She has been devoting herself to establishing an integrated platform for early lead discovery involving computer-aided drug design, and modern synthetic techniques in conjunction with biological screening assay. 

She then moved to University of California Irvine, to work with Professor Larry Overman exploring the catalytic asymmetric chemistry of palladium(II) as a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 research fellow.

Helen then worked at GSK for 15 years. She started in medicinal chemistry, but became increasingly involved in making synthetic processes and research operations as efficient and sustainable as possible, and led Green Chemistry for GSK for many years.  She is on the Editorial Board of Green Chemistry, and on the Editorial Advisory Board of ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering and in April 2022 she took up the position of Director of the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York.

Following this she completed her D.Phil. entitled "Probing sugar-plant-soil signaling" at the University of Oxford with Professor Ben Davis. Joanna then worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Benedikt Kessler in the Department of Medicine, where she created novel ubiquitin-based covalent capture probes and developed inhibitor screening assays. She returned to the chemistry department at the University of Oxford in 2014 to work with Professor Tom Brown where her research focused on the study of DNA cross-link repair enzymes, developing assays to study their selectivity and for inhibitor screening. In 2016, Joanna moved to Trinity College Dublin to take up the position of Schuler Assistant Professor in Translational Organic Chemistry.