Andy (ADS) was born in Middlesbrough and left school to enjoy two years playing football with Aston Villa F.C. before studying for his ‘A’ levels. In 1992 he came up to Jesus College to study Chemistry at the University of Oxford, completing his undergraduate Part II project in 1996 with Professor Steve Davies.

Staying at Oxford, he gained a D. Phil under the direction of Professor Steve Davies entitled “Asymmetric Oligomerisation Strategies”. His doctoral research focused upon the development of methodology for asymmetric intra- and intermolecular consecutive conjugate addition reactions, the preparation of polyfunctional and differentially protected β-amino scaffolds and the discovery of a novel oxidative deprotection strategy.

Awarded the cross-disciplinary Weston Junior Research Fellowship (by open competition) at New College, University of Oxford in 2000 for post-doctoral studies, a successful research collaboration with Professor Steve Davies was established. During this association he participated in a variety of research topics within the realm of asymmetric synthesis, including the total synthesis of natural products, the development of stereoselective [2,3] sigmatropic rearrangements, the asymmetric synthesis of β-amino acids, ammonium directed oxidative transformations and the use of chiral auxiliaries, resulting in a total of 95 publications.

ADS started his independent research career when appointed as a Royal Society URF within the School of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews in October 2005. He was promoted to Reader in 2010, gained an ERC consolidator award in 2011 and was promoted to Professor in 2012. ADS was awarded the RSC Merck Award in 2014 and RSC Charles Rees Award in 2018 as recognition of the work carried out within his research group. He is currently Director of the EPSRC CDT in Critical Resource Catalysis (CRITICAT), a joint initiative by St Andrews, Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt Universities, as well as the new EaSI-CAT (East of Scotland Industrial Catalysis) Centre. He was elected FRSE in 2017. ADS is committed to educating and training individuals to the highest standards. 35 PhD students have completed their studies to date, alongside supervision of 15 post-doctoral research associates. Past members of the group have gone onto postdoctoral and full academic positions at Universities in the UK and abroad, while others have taken positions in the pharmaceutical industry or in other chemistry-related disciplines including teaching.

The main theme of research in the ADS group is the development of innovative enantioselective catalysis methods for the preparation of enantiopure materials alongside mechanistic studies of these processes. Current major research themes involve the development of novel catalytic strategies involving NHCs and isothioureas as enantioselective Lewis base catalysts and their application to the development of approaches for the assembly of functional molecules. Alongside methodology development, we have developed a comprehensive mechanistic understanding of these transformations, and have enjoyed successful collaborations with physical organic chemists (Prof. AnnMarie O’Donoghue (AOD), Durham; Prof. Guy Lloyd-Jones, Edinburgh, Prof Herbert Mayr, LMU). We have also developed a long-standing collaboration with theorists who support our work computationally (Prof. Paul Cheong, Oregon State, USA). We have worked extensively with the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industry through collaborative awards with GSK, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Syngenta and Merck/Schering-Plough.