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 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
Pintu obtained his B.Sc. degree from Ramkrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur (University of Calcutta) in 2010. Following this, he pursued M.Sc. in Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (India) from 2010–2012. He earned his PhD degree (2012-2017) under the supervision of Prof. Brindaban C. Ranu at the department of Organic Chemistry in Indian Association for the Cultivation of science, Kolkata, India. His PhD research work is based on metal catalyzed and visible light photocatalyzed coupling reactions towards synthesis of useful molecules. Then he joined as a postdoc in Prof. Choong Eui Song´s group at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. He obtained BK-21 (Brain Korean) postdoc fellowship from South Korea. He continued his postdoctoral research under Prof. Arkadi Vigalok (Tel Aviv University, Israel) and Prof. Kyungsoo Oh (Chung Ang University, South Korea). His postdoctoral research mainly focused on asymmetric organocatalysis, NO gas sensing by bis-calixarenes through fluoroscence study. Pintu also did research on electroreductive methodology development under Prof. Helena Lundberg at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden as a Curl Trigger Postdoc Fellow. Currently he is working on DKR of heteroaromatic molecules under Prof. Andrew Smith in University of St Andrews as a Marie Curie Fellow.
Dr Atanu Mondal
Atanu was born in West Bengal, India. He completed his Master’s degree in 2016 from Ramakrishna Mission Residential College Narendrapur, Kolkata. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Mohali, India, in 2022 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. S. S. V. Ramasastry. His doctoral research focused on the “Phosphine Catalysed Annulation of Designed Enones and Ynones.” Then, he joined as a post-doctoral fellow under the guidance of Prof. Abhishek Chatterjee at Boston College USA in October 2022, where he worked on developing new site-specific protein bio-conjugation reactions using genetically encoded unnatural amino acids. He joined the ADS group in January 2024 as a Marie-Curie fellow. His current work mainly focuses on the Dynamic Kinetic Resolution of tertiary alcohols. Apart from research, he loves doing photography and painting.
Dr Lotte Stockhammer
Lotte was born in Gmunden, Austria. She carried out her Master thesis in the group of Prof. Mario Waser at JKU Linz (Austria), working on hypervalent Iodine chemistry. She stayed in the same group for her doctoral studies (2020-2024), with her work revolving around isochalcogenourea mediated alpha-functionalisation reactions of C(1) ammonium enolates as well as the development of novel catalysts for this purpose. During her PhD, she had the opportunity to join the Ofial group at LMU Munich (Germany) several times to investigate nucleophilicity and Lewis basicity of those catalysts. Lotte joined the ADS group in February 2025 as an Erwin Schrödinger postdoctoral fellow (funded by the Austrian Science Funds, FWF) working on asymmetric rearrangement reactions. When not in the lab, Lotte enjoys biking, hiking, windsurfing and playing chess.
Final 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.
3rd Year PhD Students
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.
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.
2nd Year PhD Students
Martha Prindl
Martha Prindl grew up in Cornwall. She completed her BSC in Medicinal chemistry at St Andrews in 2023, which included a year abroad at Queen's university in Canada with a summer project in the Capicciotti Lab. She has now started her PhD work in the ADS group working under 'Boron: beyond the reagent' grant.
Sonia Kharb
Sonia Kharb comes from Haryana in India. She graduated with Honours in Chemistry from Guru Jambheshar University of Science and Technology (Hissar) and then pursued her Master's degree in Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT, Ropar). Currently, she is enrolled as a PhD student at the University of St Andrews under the supervision of Professor Andrew D. Smith. Her research focuses on the enantioselective syntheses through the study of isochalcogenourea-catalysed chemistry.
1st year PhD Student
Josh Walker
Josh grew up in Hertfordshire and completed his MChem at the University of York in 2024. This included an industrial placement in his final year, working in process research at Bayer agrochemicals in Germany. He has now started work in the ADS group where he will be focusing on the enantioselective synthesis of biaryl ethers.
