Current Group Members
Dr. Jack K. Clegg completed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry, History and German at the University of Sydney winning The University Medal. He also completed his Bachelor of Laws and PhD at the same institution. His doctoral studies were undertaken under Prof. Leonard F. Lindoy and Prof. Kate A. Jolliffe. Jack has been a Fellow of the Senate of the University of Sydney, a Director of The Australian Youth Orchestra and is the Deputy Chair of The Australian Country Credit Union. He recently won a Marie Curie Fellowship and has taken it up at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Maarten Smulders was born in 1981 in Liempde, the Netherlands. In 2005 he received his MSc degree cum laude in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands). At this university, he also performed his PhD research in the laboratory of Macromolecular and Organic Chemistry, under supervision of prof. dr. E. W. Meijer. The aim of his research was to investigate the mechanisms of self-assembly and the principles of chiral amplification in supramolecular polymers. In December 2009 he received his PhD degree. Since April 2010 he has been working as a postdoc in the group of Jonathan R. Nitschke at the University of Cambridge on a Rubicon fellowship, awarded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
Azucena Jiménez was born in 1976 in Asturias, Spain. She received her degree in Chemistry from the University of Oviedo, (Asturias) in 2001. Then she moved to San Sebastian for her PhD studies in Organic Chemistry in the group of Prof. Palomo under the supervision of Prof. Palomo and Prof. Aizpurua to work on projects involving organic synthesis and conformational analysis of new peptidomimetics. At the beginning of 2010, she won a Basque region postdoctoral fellowship to work in the group of Jonathan Nitschke at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Jeanne L. Bolliger began her studies in Chemistry at the University of Zurich in 2001 and received her diploma in 2007. Her diploma work was carried out in the research group of Dr. Ch. M. Frech at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry and led her to new discoveries in the area of palladium chemistry and palladium catalysed cross-coupling reactions. Jeanne continued this research on aminophosphine based palladium pincer complexes in her doctorate which eventually resulted in the commercial availability of one of the palladium pincer complexes.In April 2011, Jeanne joined the group of Jonathan Nitschke as a post-doctoral research associate. She recently won a SNF postdoctoral fellowship which will support her stay in Cambridge.
Dr. Ana Castilla completed her degree in Chemistry in 2002 at the University of the Balearic Islands (Spain). In 2003, she undertook her doctoral studies on the synthesis of a macrocyclic receptorfor the chiral recognition of peptides, under the supervision of Prof. P. Ballester, at the same institution. After obtaining her PhD in November 2008 she joined Dr. A. Kleij’s group at the ICIQ (Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia) where she worked on the preparation and study of multimetallic salen complexes. Since January of 2011 she is working as a postdoc in the group of Jonathan R. Nitschke at the University of Cambridge.
Asit Patra was born in 1977 in Bankura, India. After completing his B Sc degree in 1997 and M Sc degree in 1999 from Vidyasagar University, India, he joined the group of Prof. Dipakranjan Mal at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, to undertake a PhD degree. There he worked on the total synthesis of natural products. In 2006, he joined Dr. Michael Bendikov’s group for postdoctoral research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and worked on conducting polymers and conjugated molecules toward applications in organic electronic materials. Then he went to University of California, Santa Barbara working with Prof. G. C. Bazan. There he worked on conjugated polymers for plastic solar cells. Recently, he joined in the group of Dr. J. R. Nitschke at the University of Cambridge as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow. His present research interests are metallopolymers, from synthesis to possible applications.
Naoki Ousaka was born in 1978 in Nagoya, Japan. He received his MSc and PhD at Nagoya Institute of Technology (March 2007), under the supervision of Professor Yoshihito Inai. He did his first postdoc with Professor Reiko Kuroda at the University of Tokyo in 2007, and then with Professor Eiji Yashima at Nagoya University in 2009. Since April 2011 he has been working in the group of Dr. Jonathan R. Nitschke at the University of Cambridge as a JSPS fellow.
Tanya Ronson was born in Palmerston North and grew up in Dunedin, New Zealand. She received a Bsc(Hons) degree in chemistry from the University of Otago, Dunedin in 2002 and spent a year working as a research assistant in the group of Dr Sally Brooker. She moved to Sheffield in 2003 to complete a PhD in supramolecular coordination chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Mike Ward at the University of Sheffield and received her PhD in 2006. She then went onto to carry out postdoctoral work on metallo-supramolecular assemblies with stellated polyhedral structures in the group of Dr Michaele Hardie at the University of Leeds from 2007-2009 before taking time out to travel across Asia. She joined the group of Jonathan Nitschke as a postdoctoral research fellow in August 2011.
Jonathan Foster obtained his M.Chem. degree from Durham University in 2008 where he also undertook his doctoral studies with Prof. Jonathan Steed. His research focussed on the design and study of supramolecular gels for applications including controlling crystallisation, drug delivery and the templation of nanoporous polymers. From March 2012 Jonathan will be taking up a post-doctoral position in the Nitschke group.
Airton Salles was born in 1977 in Brazil. He received his PhD in Chemistry from State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Luiz Carlos Dias working on total synthesis of Pteridic Acid A and B. In 2010, he moved to the group of Prof. Carlos Roque Duarte Correia (UNICAMP) as a postdoc working on separation of enantiomers using Simulated Moving Bed Chromatography and participating in the development of the first asymmetric Heck-Matsuda reaction (in press). In March 2012 he will join the group of Prof. Nitschke as a postdoctoral research fellow working on molecular capsules.
Emily Dry was born in 1983 in Southampton, England, where she grew up. She received her Master's degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 2007, having carried out a research project in the group of the late Dr Joe Spencer. In October 2008 she commenced studies towards a PhD in Chemistry under the supervision of Jonathan Nitschke.
Wenjing Meng was born in Beijing, China. She received her MChem degree from the University of York in 2008, having carried out research in the labs of Professor David Smith. In the final year of her undergraduate course she worked as an industrial placement student at GlaxoSmithKline. Since October 2008 is working towards a PhD in chemistry at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Jonathan Nitschke.
Yana R. Hristova was born in 1984 in Sofia, Bulgaria. She received her Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Franklin & Marshall College, Pennsylvania in 2007. After spending a year working on dynamic combinatorial chemistry in Sijbren Otto's group, Yana started PhD research in October 2008 at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Jonathan Nitschke.
Imogen A. Riddell was born in 1986 and grew up in the Scottish Borders. She moved to Glasgow to complete her M.Sci. degree and in 2009 graduated from The University of Strathclyde having completed research projects within the labs of Peter Cormack and Duncan Graham. She has also undertaken industrial placements with Novartis and Pfizer, and since October 2009 has been working towards a PhD under the supervision of Jonathan Nitschke.
Shucong Ma was born in Beijing, China. She received her MChem degree from the University of Warwick in 2007. Since then she has been working in a biotech company near Oxford on drug discovery projects. Starting from 2009 she is working towards a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Jonathan Nitschke.
Ceri Parfitt was born in 1984 in Manchester, England. She received her Masters degree in Chemistry from the University of Oxford in June 2006. In October 2006 she joined the Cancer Research UK PhD Programme in Medicinal Chemistry, studying aspects of dynamic combinatorial chemistry, NFB signalling, and vasculogenesis in Xenopus laevis in three separate laboratory rotations. She is currently working towards a PhD with Jonathan Nitschke and Stephen Charnock-Jones (Obstetrics and Gynaecology) on peptide mimetics aimed at inhibiting Caspase-4.
Rana A. Bilbeisi was born and raised in Amman- Jordan. She obtained her undergraduate degree from Concordia University, Montreal- Canada in 2005. Rana worked at MDS Pharma Services and Merck Frosst as part of her co-op undergraduate degree. She then completed her M.Sc. degree under the supervision of Dr. N. Moitessier at McGill University in 2008. Before starting her PhD with Dr J. Nitschke in October 2009 she had taught chemistry at Kings Academy in Madaba- Jordan.
Salvatore Zarra was born in 1986 in Italy. He received his Master’s degree in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Bologna in July 2010. His final year Master’s degree project was carried out in the group of Professor Giuliano Longoni under the supervision of Dr. Stefano Zacchini working on metal carbonyl clusters. In October 2010 he started his PhD in Chemistry under the supervision of Jonathan Nitschke at the University of Cambridge.
Samuel Black, born in 1987, is from Argyll in the West Highlands of Scotland. He studied for a Masters in Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, during which he completed an industrial placement with Johnson Matthey Catalysts, and a final year research project titled “Targeting Mitochondria in Plasmodium Falciparum Using Atovaquone Analogues” with Dr Richard Hartley. In 2010 he joined the research groups of Prof. Jeremy K. M. Sanders and Dr Jonathan Nitschke as a joint student working on the exploration of Donor-Acceptor interactions in metallosupramolecular structures.
Ching-Wei Chiu was born in Taiwan. He received his Master's degree in Chemistry from the National Taiwan University, having carried out research in the labs of Professor Sheng-Hsien Chiu. After spending a year working on organic synthesis and radical chemistry in Yeun-Min Tsai's group, He started working towards a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge
Colm Browne was born in Dublin, Ireland. He did his undergraduate studies in Trinity College Dublin completing research projects with Professor John Kelly, Professor Sylvia Draper and Dr. Wolfgang Schmitt working on the synthesis of inorganic materials for carbon capture and gas storage. He started as a PhD student in the group of Dr. Jonathan Nitschke in October 2010.
Chris Wood was born in 1989 and grew up in Muswell Hill, North London. He attended Lady Margaret Hall Oxford and received his Master of Chemistry degree in 2011. His final year was spent in Dr Martin Smith's Group working on hydrogen-bonded photoswitches. He also worked for UCB Celltech and Evotec in their in-house drugs programs during two summer holidays. His hobbies include cooking, squash and photography at which he is an enthusiastic amateur.
Daniel Wood was born in 1987 in Cambridge, UK. He received his Masters in Chemistry from the University of Reading, working under the supervision of Dr Wayne Hayes on 'pH Tuneable Hydrogelators for Water Purification'. In 2011 he started his PhD under the supervision of Dr Jonathan Nitschke and Prof. Jeremy Sanders, working on metalloporphyrin assemblies.
William Ramsay was born and raised in the frozen wonderland of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I received my Bachelor of Science with Specialization in Chemistry from the University of Alberta in 2011, having worked with research projects within the lab of Dr. Eric Rivard. Coming October of 2011 he will be working towards a PhD in chemistry at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Dr. Jonathan Nitschke.
Former Group Members
Group in 2009
Group in Autumn 2008
