PhD project themes

Professor Graham Hutchings

• Gold nanoparticles as novel active heterogeneous catalysts.
• Design of selective oxidation and hydrogenation catalysts.
• Design of novel heterogeneous catalysts.

Professor Philip Davies

• Mechanism of photocatalysis and water splitting.
• Surface reaction mechanisms studied with scanning tunnelling microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
• Nanoparticle stabilisation for heterogeneous catalysis studied with atomic force microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

Professor Stuart Taylor

• Development of heterogeneous catalysts for environmental protection.
• Heterogeneous catalysts for selective oxidation under mild conditions.

Professor Richard Catlow

• Computational Modelling of Structure and Mechanism of Catalytic Systems
• Synchrotron Radiation and Neutron Scattering Studies in Catalysis
• Catalytic Conversion of Carbon Dioxide

Dr Jonathan Bartley

• New methods for synthesizing metal oxides and mixed metal oxides catalysts.
• Microwave assisted catalysis.

Dr Jennifer Edwards

• Reducing PGM content of heterogeneous catalysts whilst maintaining high activity
• Biomass valorisation through selective hydrogenation
• Rapid Synthesis of highly dispersed nanoparticles via microwave synthetic approaches
• Synthesis of visible light activated antimicrobial/viral nanoparticles
• Visible light assisted water and air remediation of radical formation

Dr Sankar Meenakshisundaram

• Supported monometallic and bimetallic nanoparticles catalysts for selective oxidation, selective hydrogenation, coupling reactions and cascade reactions.
• Catalyst development for the valorisation of renewable materials such as CO₂, lignocellulosic biomass components (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin).
• Towards understanding the structure-activity correlation for catalytic reactions using in situ spectroscopic and kinetic methodologies

Professor Rebecca Melen

• Radical Approaches to Frustrated Lewis Pairs
• New p-block Lewis acids for metal-free catalysis

• Periodic DFT calculations for surface catalysis.
• Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics applied to material properties.
• Chemical kinetics and mechanism in heterogeneous catalysis.

Dr Alberto Roldan Martinez

• Circular economy of plastics: catalysts for plastics functionalisation and reuse
• Innovative heterogeneous catalysts for industially challenging reactions: Biomass valorisation and CO2 utilisation
• Energy storage: electrolysers and low-temperature ammonia synthesis
• The last frontier in Computational Chemistry: Unravelling the catalysts' structure-reactivity-durability relationships

Dr Andrew Logsdail

• Development and application of novel QM, MM and QM/MM methodology
• Investigation of properties of crystalline materials, and how doping affects these properties
• Application of materials towards heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis, such as MTH and biofuel upgrading
• Simulation of the structure, spectra and reactivity for metal nanoparticles
• Investigation of the interaction and coupling of multi-compenent catalytic systems (i.e. catalyst, support and solvent), and understanding how this affects reactivity.

• Atomic-resolution imaging of catalytic nanoparticles under reaction conditions
• Development of 3D imaging techniques for nanomaterials using electron microscopy
• Correlative 3D imaging linking X-ray and electron measurements to understand catalyst structure across length scales.

Professor Kenneth Harris

• Development and application of new strategies for crystal structure determination from powder X-ray diffraction data.
• Understanding fundamentals of crystallization processes by in-situ solid-state NMR.
• Polymorphism in molecular materials.
• Fundamentals and applications of X-ray Birefringence Imaging – a new experimental technique that represents the X-ray analogue of the polarizing optical microscope.

Dr Stefano Leoni

• Crystal Structure Prediction.
• Materials for Energy Storage.

Dr Alison Paul

• Physicochemical characterisation of macromolecules in solution.
• Polymer mediated drug-delivery system

• Heavy metal-free organic redox photosensitizer/photocatalyst
• Supramolecular control of light-induced properties of molecular materials
• Organic room-temperature phosphors
• Functional porous materials
• New reaction development and mechanistic investigation

Professor Thomas Wirth

• Development of New Hypervalent Iodine Reagents.
• Iodine-based Catalysis for Drug Synthesis.
• Microreactor Technology under segmented-flow conditions.
• Flow Electrochemistry for the Green Synthesis of Heterocycles.
• 3D - Printing of New Reactors for Flow Chemistry.

Professor Simon Pope

• Development of luminescent complexes for bioimaging applications.
• Development of hybrid materials for luminescent applications.

Dr Angelo Amoroso

• Development of highly fluorescent lanthanide complexes.
• Design and synthesis of MRI contrast agents.

Dr Niklaas Buurma

• Kinetic and mechanistic studies of Pd-catalysed reactions and their translation to the rational use of enabling technologies
• Kinetics and mechanistic studies of racemisation of drug-like compounds
• Optoelectronically active nucleic acid binders as sensitisers in biosensors
• Directed assembly of functional nanostructures
• Development of analytical techniques for the design of functional nanostructures
• Synthesis of optoelectroncically active nucleic acid binders
• Biophysical studies of nucleic acid binding processes
• Development of software for the analysis of complex equilibrium systems

Professor Ian Fallis

• Immuno-histochemical imaging and applications in clinical pathology.
• Synthesis and coordination chemistry of macrocyclic ligands and polydentate Lewis acids.

Professor Rebecca Melen

• Radical approaches to Frustrated Lewis Pairs
• New p-block Lewis acids for metal-free catalysis

Dr Paul Newman

• Fused expanded-ring NHCs in coordination chemistry and homogeneous catalysis.
• Development of stereogenic-at-metal complexes for asymmetric catalysis
• Novel ligand frameworks for the construction of multimetallic systems

Dr Benjamin Ward

• Asymmetric catalysis using environmentally benign calcium complexes.
• Polymerisation catalysis using Earth-abundant catalysts.
• Polymers containing CO₂: benign polymers from abundant feedstocks.
• Asymmetric catalysis using aluminium complexes.

• Synthetic organic chemistry
• Organofluorine chemistry
• Radiochemistry with PET radionuclides
• Radiotracer design and clinical translation

Professor Damien Murphy

• Visualisation of weakly interacting molecules in solution by Selective Electron Nuclear DOuble Resonance (ENDOR) spectroscopy.

• Metal-protein interactions in Alzheimer's disease.
• Metal-DNA interactions in cancer therapeutics.
• Theoretical studies of non-covalent interactions.

Dr Emma Richards

• EPR spectroscopy of TiO₂ photocalalysts.