Timothy Easun was appointed as a Cardiff University Research Fellow in 2015 and shortly afterwards was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to study flow confined on the nanoscale within metal–organic frameworks. His interests are linked by a desire to understand and control the nanoscale dynamic processes that happen in the synthesis and properties of MOFs. Prior to starting his independent research group, he worked as Senior Research Officer for Prof. Schröder (Nottingham); was an Inorganic Teaching Fellow for one year; was a PDRA for Prof. George (Nottingham), and completed his PhD in the group of Prof. Ward (Sheffield).
Paul Elliott carried out his undergraduate studies at the University of York (MChem 2001) before moving to the University of Sheffield to commence doctoral research in iridium catalysed carbonylation of methanol in the group of Dr Tony Haynes (PhD 2005). He subsequently returned to York to undertake postdoctoral research on transition metal mediated hyperpolarisation transfer in NMR spectroscopy with Prof. Simon Duckett. He obtained his lectureship at the University of Huddersfield in 2007 where he is now a Professor of inorganic chemistry and Associate Dean of the School of Applied Sciences. His research interests include the coordination chemistry of triazole-based ligands with a particular focus on the photophysics, photochemistry and applications of their resultant complexes.
Andy Johnson received his PhD from the University of Durham in 1999, under the supervision of Prof. Ken Wade FRS, Dr Andy Hughes and Prof. Judith A. K. Howard FRS, CBE. After postdoctoral research at University of Rennes with Prof. Pierre Dixnuef, he returned to the UK, with successive postdoctoral fellowships with Prof. Matthew Davidson and Prof. Paul Raithby at the University of Bath. In 2007 he was appointed to a lectureship, and is now senior lecturer in Inorganic and Materials chemistry. His research interests lie in the fundamental and applied chemistry of organometallic complexes, especially those with utility in the deposition of functional thin films by CVD and ALD techniques.
Following his BA degree in Chemistry at Swarthmore College (USA), Nathan T. La Porte graduated from the University of Chicago, receiving his PhD in Chemistry in 2015 for work on photoinduced intercatalyst electron transfer in chromophore/catalyst systems aimed at renewable CO2 reduction, under the supervision of Prof. Michael Hopkins. He joined the Solar Fuels team of the Wasielewski Group at Northwestern University, Chicago, in 2015 as postdoctoral researcher. In 2017 he became research associate, within the same research group, investigating on photoinduced electron transfer in systems comprised of organic chromophores and organometallic catalysts through time resolved UV-Vis and IR spectroscopy.
Louise Natrajan is a Reader in Chemistry at the University of Manchester. She studied at the University of York (UK) and received her PhD from The University of Nottingham (UK) with Professor Polly Arnold. She then moved to the CEA, Grenoble, France as a PDRA with Professor Marinella Mazzanti and then moved back to the UK as a PDRA with Professor Stephen Faulkner at the University of Manchester. In 2008, she was awarded an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship and in 2012 a Leverhulme Trust Research Leadership award. Her current research focuses on the coordination chemistry and optical properties of the lanthanides and actinides. In 2015 she was awarded the RSC Bill Newton Award in recognition of her outstanding achievements in the field of radiochemistry.
Adam Nevin was born in Bristol in 1990. He obtained his MSci in 2012 from the University of Nottingham, where, in 2016, he also obtained his PhD on ‘Refining Pore Size, Functionality and Stability in Porous Hybrid Frameworks’, working in the research group of Prof. Schröder (Nottingham). In 2017, he secured funding as a post-doctoral researcher in the group of Dr Easun in Cardiff, applying his expertise on metal–organic frameworks to a new area of photo-assisted water purification. In 2018, he began work as a KTP associate between Loughborough University and Trelleborg, working on nano-polymer composites.
James D. Parish was an undergraduate at the University of Bath where he achieved MChem (Hons) in 2014. A fortuitous summer project inspired his choice of PhD project, with Dr Andy Johnson in Bath, in the area of the development of group 14-based precursor for atomic layer deposition (ALD) of semiconducting metal oxide materials, which he will complete in 2018.
Nathan Patmore obtained his PhD in organometallic chemistry and catalysis from the University of Bath in 2002 under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Weller. He then moved to The Ohio State University for postdoctoral studies in the Chisholm group. He returned to the UK in 2005 with the award of a Ramsay Fellowship at the University of Sheffield, before obtaining a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2006. In 2013 he moved to the University of Huddersfield, and is currently a reader in inorganic chemistry with research in the areas of metal–metal bonding, electron transfer reactions and catalytic mechanisms.
Alessandro Sinopoli was born in Italy and received his MSc in Chemistry from Università degli Studi di Messina in 2011. He completed his PhD in 2016 at University of Huddersfield (UK) working on metal complexes as chromophores for dye-sensitised solar cells under the supervision of Prof. Paul Elliott. After undertaking post-doctoral researcher work on strong donor carbene iridium complexes in Huddersfield, he joined Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute in 2017. Currently, his research interests are related to synthesis and characterization of transition metal complexes for electro- and photo-reduction of CO2, and to investigate on photo-driven molecular systems for CO2 reduction.
Muhammad Sohail received his MSc degree from Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. Following his PhD at the Open University (UK), he held postdoctoral position at the same University where his research was focused on the organosilicon chemistry and siloxane based materials. Before joining Qatar Environment & Energy Research Institute (QEERI), he was an assistant research scientist at Texas A&M University at Qatar where his research was focused on the photocatalysis and time resolve spectroscopy. His current research interests are related to renewable energies that include materials for photovoltaic applications, catalysis for CO2 conversion to value-added products, hydrogenation, and storage.
James W. Walton completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Durham with First Class Honours. Under the supervision of Prof. David Parker, he completed a PhD entitled “Highly Emissive Europium Complexes”, funded by CISbio Bioassays, an immunoassay company based in the south of France. This was followed by postdoctoral work with Prof. Jonathan M. J. Williams at the University of Bath, developing ruthenium complexes for catalytic SNAr reactions and catalytic methods of amide synthesis. James returned to Durham to take up an assistant professorship in inorganic chemistry in January 2014. Research in Walton group focuses on organometallic complexes in catalysis and as therapeutics.
Michael R. Wasielewski is the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry, Northwestern University, and Director of the Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research Center. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. He began his career at Argonne National Laboratory, where he advanced to Senior Scientist and Group Leader. In 1994, he joined the faculty of Northwestern University. From 2001–2004 he served as Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern. His research has resulted in over 560 publications and focuses on light-driven processes in molecules and materials, artificial photosynthesis, molecular electronics, and molecular spintronics.
Luke Wilkinson obtained his MChem degree from the University of East Anglia, Norwich and then started a PhD under the supervision of Dr Nathan Patmore, initially at the University of Sheffield, but later at the University of Huddersfield. His PhD studies focused on the synthesis of multiply-bonded dimetal paddlewheel complexes for studies into novel charge transfer mechanisms. Following his PhD he took up a PDRA position in the Walton group at Durham University on a project exploring the reactivity of (η6arene)M complexes, particularly towards C–H activation reactions. Luke is currently enjoying a second PDRA position at Imperial College London with Prof. Nicholas Long applying ferrocenes towards molecular electronics.
Hannah Wilson studied for her undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford, spending her final year working on the self-assembly of luminescent lanthanide complexes with Prof. Steve Faulkner. In 2017, Hannah moved to The University of Manchester to begin a BBSRC funded PhD developing biosensor applications of upconverting lanthanide doped nanoparticles with Drs Louise Natrajan, Sam Hay, Iain Crowe and Matthew Halsall.
After graduating from the University of East Anglia with a MChem in Chemistry (graduated 2009), Dr Adam Woodward studied for his PhD at the University of Central Florida in the lab of Prof. Kevin Belfield (graduated 2014), where he investigated the linear and non-linear photophysical properties of organic fluorophores. He now explores the potential of transition metal complexes with photochromic ligands, and the photophysics of f-block complexes as a postdoctoral researcher with Dr Louise Natrajan.
