The Smith Group
Post Doctoral Researchers and Visiting Scholars
Dr Kevin Kasten
Kevin was born and raised in Berlin (Germany) where he conducted his undergraduate studies at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Kevin carried out his final year research project in the Smith group, studying NHC catalysed regiodivergent Steglich rearrangements before completing his PhD within the group investigating cinchona alkaloid catalysis. He then obtained a post-doc position with Peter O’Brien at the University of York. Kevin is now a post-doctoral researcher with Prof. Andrew Smith investigating the effect of Chalcogen-bonding within isothiourea catalysed reactions.
Dr Tengfei Kang
Tengfei grew up in Xianyang, a historical city in China, and in 2014 he got a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Sichuan University. Afterwards, he obtained his PhD degree at Sichuan University, under the supervision of Prof. Xiaoming Feng in 2019. His previous work mainly focused on catalytic asymmetric transformations by employing chiral N,N′-dioxide/metal complexes and guanidines as catalysts. After one year as an assistant researcher in the Feng group, he joined the ADS group in September 2020 as a Newton International Fellow to develop novel catalytic asymmetric methodologies using chiral Lewis bases.
Dr Pankaj Kumar Majhi
Pankaj comes from West Bengal, India. He completed his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Jadavpur University in 2013 then he completed his M.Sc in Chemistry from IIT Kanpur in 2015. He obtained his Ph.D. degree at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, under the supervision of Prof. Yonggui Robin Chi in 2020. His previous work mainly focused on enantioselective synthetic transformations by employing N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) catalyst. He joined the ADS group in March 2022 as a Marie-Curie fellow. His current work mainly focuses on mechanistic studies of NHC-organocatalysis.
Dr Raj Tak
Raj was born in Rajasthan, India. He completed his Master’s degree from Rajasthan University Jaipur. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, India in 2018 under the supervision of the late Prof. Dr. R. I. Kureshy. His doctoral research work focused on the “Development of chiral catalyst for various organic transformations”. In April 2019 he received the prestigious JSPS Post-Doctoral Fellowship and worked under Prof. Dr. Masakatsu Shibasaki at the Microbial Chemistry Research Foundation (BIKAKEN), Tokyo, Japan. Raj started his second postdoc at Penn State University USA in September 2021, where he worked on asymmetric dicarbofunctionalisation reactions of alkenes until September 2022. He joined the ADS group in February 2023 as a Marie-Curie fellow. His current work mainly focuses on the Dynamic Kinetic Resolution of tertiary alcohols. Apart from research, he loves to play cricket and listen to music.
Dr Pintu Maity
Dr Atanu Mondal
Simon Morgenschweis
Final Year PhD Students
Matthew Westwood
Matthew grew up in Newcastle before completing his MChem at Heriot-Watt University. During his exchange year at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, he carried out a research project under Prof. Martina Stenzel at the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design, developing a RAFT synthesis of fucose-based glycopolymers. He then carried out an Royal Society of Chemistry funded summer placement in the lab of Dr Ai-Lan Lee as well as a summer placement working for Dr Ruaraidh McIntosh. Under the supervision of Dr Ai-Lan Lee, he undertook his final year project on the Minisci-type acylation and carbamoylation of heterocycles. Outside of chemistry, Matthew enjoys surfing, climbing and cricket.
Alastair Nimmo
Alastair grew up in Fife and obtained his MChem from the University of St Andrews carrying out an industrial placement at Silberline Ltd. He graduated in 2020 after completing his final year project with Prof. Andrew Smith which focussed on the use of ammonium enolate catalysis for enantioselective Michael additions. Outside of chemistry, Alastair is a competitive bowler who is part of the Scotland under 25 team.
3rd Year PhD Students
Justin O’Yang
Justin grew up in Hong Kong and graduated from Durham University with an MChem in 2021. Throughout his course, he completed a summer placement with Dr Paul McGonigal, as well as an industrial placement year at AstraZeneca (Macclesfield) where he carried out his synthetic-based MChem project on route design for the synthesis of isoindolinones with Dr Simon Hardy and Prof. Ian Baxendale, then joined the crystallisation team where he investigated novel dynamic resolution strategies. He has joined the ADS group via the EaSI-CAT CDT and his PhD project will focus on enantioselective rearrangements.
Haoxiang Zhu
Haoxiang grew up in Xuzhou, China. carried out a joint degree programme, and obtained his BSc degree in chemistry from the University of Sheffield and Nanjing Tech University. Haoxiang completed his MSc degree at University College London, where his project focused on developing photochemical methods to counter global warming. Before joining the group in 2021, he worked at BASF as a process engineer for one and a half years in Shanghai. His PhD project focuses on the kinetic resolution of tertiary alcohols using isothiourea catalysis.
Zhanyu Zhou
Zhanyu obtained his MSc degrees from Zhejiang University of Technology, with the latter including a period at the University of Aberdeen. His first MSc project was based on the ring-opening reaction of cyclopropane, and second one was focused on the influence of hydrogen during the methane non-thermal plasma process. He has now joined the Smith group, where he will be working on continuous flow chemistry.
2nd Year PhD Students
Ffion Platt
Ffion grew up in the much sunnier South East of England, and obtained her MChem from the University of Bath, carrying out her placement at GSK. She completed her final year project with Dr James Taylor, focusing on indolizine synthesis through boronic acid-catalysed dehydrative Nazarov cyclisations. Her PhD project centres around enantioselective cycloadditions using isothiourea catalysis. When Ffion is not in the lab, you can usually find her on the basketball court, where she is part of the University’s performance squad.
Shubham Agrawal
Shubham is from India and completed his MSc Chemistry from IIT Kanpur, India in 2022. His masters project investigated mimicking of the copper enzyme and spectroscopic characterisation of high valent elusive copper(III) species. He did a summer project under Prof. Debabrata Maiti investigating the Non-directed C-H functionalisation of (hetero)arenes. He has now joined the Smith group for his PhD studies. He will be developing isothiourea catalysed reactions. Outside the chemistry, he has interests in current affairs, debating and playing pool.
Ihssane El Fdali
Ihssane grew up in Northern Italy and she obtained her BSc from the University of Padua. She then did a joint master’s degree between the University of Padua and the University of Giessen in Germany, where she completed her final year project in the group of Prof. Peter Schreiner working on the enantioselective House-Meinwald rearrangement. She has joined the ADS group via the EaSI-CAT CDT and her PhD project focuses on enantioselective rearrangements. Outside of chemistry, she enjoys reading, cooking, and spending time outdoors.
1st Year PhD Students
Martha Prindl
Sonia Kharb
Undergraduate Project Students
Hannah Mortlock
Hannah is investigating isothiourea-catalysed enantioselective conjugate addition of thiobenzamides with Alastair.
Daisy Smith
Daisy is investigating isothiourea-catalysed desymmetrisation of glycerol derivatives with Raj.
Beau Bissett-Cooke
Beau is investigating the kinetics behind the cyclopropanation of chalcones with Kevin.