2015 Cohort

• Alberto Avila Castro (MSci)

  Graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2013. During his master’s research he worked on the addition reaction of silylketene acetal nucleophiles to N-activated azaheterocycles evaluating the regioselectivity. He also taught basic undergrad chemistry briefly.
• Ailis Chadwick (MSci)

  Graduated from the University of Nottingham in 2015. During her fourth year she worked for Prof. Chris Hayes on the synthesis of modified oligonucleotides via oxidative copper catalysed coupling for antisense applications. She also undertook a summer placement with Prof. Martin Schroder looking at microwave activation in metal organic framework synthesis.
• Jonathan Davies (MSci)

  Graduated from the University of Bristol in 2015. During his placement year at Evotec he undertook a project investigating the synthesis of small-drug molecules for the treatment of endometriosis. During the final year of his degree he also investigated the biosynthesis and bioactivity of tetronate rings under the supervision of Professor Chris Willis.
• Lydia Dewis (MChem)

  Graduated from the University of Bath in 2015. Her final year project involved an investigation into the use and applicability of azaazulenes in the drug discovery industry with Dr. Simon Lewis. In the summer of 2014 she completed a summer project at the University of Oxford working on the synthesis of an 'in-register' β-turn mimetic under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Hamilton.
• Louise Eagling (MChem)

  Graduated from the University of East Anglia in 2015. During her industrial placement year she worked for Novartis as a medicinal chemist. The year also included a collaboration with Dr. Paz Muñoz-Herranz, UEA, working on the platinum catalysed inter- and intramolecular addition of nucleophiles to allenes: A new and efficient method to obtain multi-heteroaromatic structures with potential biological activity.
• Joshua Farndon (MSci)

  Graduated from the University of Birmingham in 2015. His final year project was supervised by Dr Paul Davies and investigated the gold-catalysed formation of sulfur containing heterocycles via rearrangement of sulfur ylides.
• James Fordham (MSci)

  Graduated from the University of Nottingham in 2015. He undertook an industrial placement during his third year at GSK where he synthesised kinase inhibitors for a medicinal chemistry project. During his final year he worked under the supervision of Prof. Chris Moody, where he studied the novel photochemical reactions of quinones.
• Beth Glaisyer (MChem)

  Graduated from the University of Bath in 2015. Her final year project was supervised by Professor Chris Frost, developing a one-pot methodology for the synthesis of a drug molecule using copper catalysis.
• Alastair Knights (MChem)

  Graduated from the University of Oxford in 2015. His final year project was supervised by Professor Simon Aldridge, investigating the synthesis of novel borylamido ligands and using these to make new low-valent group 14 metal compounds which have the potential to be used to activate small molecules such as H2 and NH3.
• Sarah Michel (MSc)

  Graduated from the Graduate School of Chemistry of Montpellier, France, in 2015. She performed her Master thesis at the University of Cambridge working on the synthesis of polymers and nanoparticle formulation for drug vectorisation. She also undertook an industrial placement at Roche, Switzerland, in the medicinal chemistry pRED department.

• David Morris (MSci)

  Graduated from Bristol in 2015. He undertook his final year project under the supervision of Prof. Varinder Aggarwal, investigating the use of lithiation-borylation and allylic protodeboronation in the total synthesis of (+)-discodermolide. He also undertook a placement at Bristol in the Prof. Orr-Ewing laser lab using spectroscopic methods to determine the relaxation mechanisms of UV-excited Watson-Crick DNA base pairs, with some additional time in Dr. Carmen Galan's lab synthetically derivitising the base pairs.
• Michael O'Hagan (MChem)

  Graduated from the University of Oxford in 2010. In his final year, he worked in the lab of Professor Timothy Donohoe on the synthesis of the natural product Streptonigrin via ring-closing metathesis. Michael also undertook placements at the Institute of Cancer Therapeutics at the University of Bradford (synthesising sialic acid analogues with possible anti-tumour activity) and at Merck (working on a novel methodology to prepare 3-methyl indoles).