Past Group Members

Postdocs

Andrew Bage

Andrew Bage

Andrew finished his PhD in 2021.

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Dominik Frank

Dominik is currently working for Rosche in Basel. (2013)

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Jamie Docherty

Jamie is currently working as a postdoctoral research associate for Prof. Igor Larrosa at The University of Manchester (2021)

Postgraduates

Daniel De Rosa

Daniel De Rosa

Jingying Peng

Jingying Peng

Jingying is currently working for WuXi AppTec in Shanghai. (2020)

Joanne Dunne

Joanne Dunne

Joanne finished her PhD in 2020.

Liam Donnelly

Liam Donnelly

Liam finished his PhD in 2021.

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Kieran Nicholson

Kieran finished his PhD in 2022.

Dominic Willcox

Dominic Willcox

Dominic finished his PhD in 2022

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Luke Britton

Luke grew up in Suffolk and obtained his MChem from the University of Bath which included an industrial placement at Sanofi developing and implementing PAT (Process Analytical Technology) systems. Under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Jones, his final year project was studying Aluminium (III) initiators for producing the biopolymer polylactic acid. In 2019, he began his Royal Society funded PhD in the Thomas group at the University of Edinburgh where he is working on developing Earth-abundant metal catalysis for organic synthesis. Luke recieved his PhD in 2023.

Alex Beaton Garcia

Alex Beaton Garcia

Alex completed his PhD, jointly supervised by Prof. Stephen Thomas and Dr Mike Cowley, in 2023 investigating Aluminium-catalysed borylations.

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Nick Barron

Nick is currently working for the National Nuclear Laboratory. (2014)

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Alison Jones

Alison is currently working as a patent attorney at Elkington + Fife. (2014)

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Mark Greenhalgh

Mark is currently working as a lecturer at The Univesity of Warwick. (2015)

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Alistair MacNair

Alistair is currently working for Cambridge Consultants. (2017)

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James Paliga

James is curently working for Sygnature Discovery. (2017)

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Kailong Zhu

Kailong Zhu finished his PhD in the Thomas group in 2017.

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Amy Challinor

Amy is currently working for Infineum. (2017)

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Peter Neate

Peter is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow for Mike Neidig at The University of Rochester. (2017)

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Nate Ang

Nate is currently completing a PhD at the University of Gottingen. (2017)

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Alessandro Bismuto

Alessandro is currently undertaking a postdoctoral position with Bill Morandi at ETH Zurich. (2018)

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Jon Carney

Jon is currently working at AstraZeneca. (2018)

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Riaz Agahi

Riaz is currently working for the Public Health service in Kosovo. (2019)

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Peter DaBell

Peter is currently a publishing editor for The Royal Society of Chemsitry. (2019)

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Rory Gordon

Rory grew up in leafy Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, before studying biochemistry (BSc) at the University of Bath. This included a placement year with Oxitec where he investigated self-limiting insect control technologies in mosquitos, sparking his interest in synthetic biology. Rory pursued this by studying synthetic biology (MRes) at University College London, where he joined the biocatalysis group lead by Profs. Helen Hailes and John Ward. His project focussed on generating novel alkaloid drug scaffolds, through engineering cytochrome P450s for an intramolecular C-C phenolic coupling reaction. Rory recently joined the Thomas and Wallace groups at the University of Edinburgh to pursue a PhD, funded by Lubrizol through the EaSi-CAT programme, with the goal to develop sustainable routes to petrochemicals. Rory finished his PhD in 2024.

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Nojus Cironis

Nojus grew up in Vilnius, Lithuania and obtained his MChem degree from University of Nottingham. He carried out his final year research project on copper mediated trifluoromethylation of aryl halides under supervision of Prof. Simon Woodward. Nojus started his PhD in September 2020 jointly supervised by Prof. Stephen Thomas and Prof. Michael Ingleson and is now working on aromatic C-H functionalisation utilising novel sulfur electrophiles.

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Natalia Llopis

Natalia completed a summer placement within the Thomas Group as part of her PhD studies with the Baeza Carratala Group at the University of Alicante.

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Oriol Salvadó Ruiz

2022

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Christian Weindl

In 2022, Christian completed a 3-month placement as visiting PhD in the Thomas group at the University of Edinburgh, funded by the EaSI-CAT SFC Saltire Emerging Researcher Scheme.

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Emanuele Cocco

In January 2023 Emanuele joined the Thomas Group to undertake a 6 month project working on boron catalysis.

Paula

Paula Dominguez

Paula Dominguez Molano was born in Reus, Spain, in 1998. She received her B. Sc. in Chemistry from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) in 2020. Her Bachelor’s project was based on the study of cobalt catalysis research in terms of C–H trifluoromethylthiolation functionalization reactions at Institut Català d’Investigació Química (ICIQ). She completed the URV-ICIQ Master Synthesis, Catalysis and Molecular Design working on the project “Transborylation reaction of alkenyl boranes with diboron reagents and gem-diboryl alkanes” under the supervision of Prof. Elena Fernández. Currently, she is doing the PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. Elena Fernández. She is currently visiting the Thomas group to work on organoborane chemistry.

Ashley

Ashley Ponich

Ashley is a visiting student from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She received her BSc in Chemistry from the University of Alberta in 2021, including a 1-year industrial internship at Gilead Sciences (Alberta). She is currently completing her PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. Dennis Hall in the area of organoboron methodology development. Ashley joined the Thomas group in May 2024, working towards Mn-catalyzed coupling reactions of boronic acids.

Undergraduates

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Fern Sinclair

2013

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Jonathon Kwan

2013

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Francesca Edmonds

2013

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Ming Ming Tran

2013

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Jen Nelson

2013

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Adam Kolodziej

2013

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George Sloan

2014

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Gail Hunter

2014

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Nils Knop

2014

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Brandon Djaja

2014

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Jacob Quibell

2014

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Clement Millet

2015

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Hector Yiannakas

2015

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Marc Calin

2015

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Sifeng Gu

2015

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Tjark Meyer

2016

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Alex Clark

2017

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Andi Mayo

2017

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Chiara Portolani

2018

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Lauren Ehehalt

2018

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Hayley Russell

2018

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Jessica Cooney

2018

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Kathryn Bisset

2018

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Claire Mitchell

2018

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Shuyang Li

2019

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Vivien Luo

2019

Undergraduate Bristol

Andy Smith (MChem, 2012); James West (BSc, 2012);  Bryden Le Bailly (MChem Bristol 2011); Tom Carter (MChem Bristol 2011); William Lanyon (BSc, 2011); Ben Lewis (BSc, 2011); Marco De Tullio Meana (Erasmus, 2011); Léa Guiet (Summer Internship, 2011); Heather Parker (MChem, 2010); Ben Cons (MChem, 2010); Alexander Käslin (Summer Internship, 2009), Craig Evans (Wellcome Trust Biomedical Vacation Scholarship, 2009), Rebecca Maksymowicz (MChem, 2009); Elliot Murphy (MChem, 2009).

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Jack Mansell

2021

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Alex Kwok

2021

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Filip Meger

2021

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Franzi Gilch

2021

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Kieran Benn

2020

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Leonie Meyer

In 2022 Leonie completed a 3-month internship in the Thomas Group.

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Jack Stubbs

Jack worked on boron catalysis in the Thomas group as part of his final year BSc research project.

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Leander May

 Leander completed a three-month internship in the Thomas group exploring novel Mn catalysis before finishing his M.Sc. back in Göttingen.

Evelyn

Evelyn Partridge

Evelyn grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts in the United States and is a visiting third year from Haverford College. She is currently working on manganese-catalysed homocoupling reactions with arylboronic acids. Evelyn joined the Thomas group in January 2024 for her spring semester abroad. 

Ivan

Ivan Or

Ivan was born and raised in Hong Kong, and is a third year visiting student from the University of Hong Kong. He is currently working on the identification of hidden brønsted acid catalysis. Ivan joined the Thomas group in January 2024 to conduct a project under the co-supervision of Prof. Stephen Thomas and Prof. C.-M. Che

 

Ian

Ian Gray

Ian is from Rhode Island in the United States and is going into his 5th year of the MChem programme at the University of Edinburgh. He is working on utilising C-H insertions of iron complexes to enable regioselective coupling reactions, on a summer project funded by the Carnegie Trust.