Committee

Dr Calum Ferguson (Chair) an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemistry.  He is a photocatalytic materials chemist researching new conjugated and vinyl-based polymers as sustainable photoredox active materials for producing commodity chemicals. As a result, he has research interests in Organic and Polymer Chemistry, Material Science and Photophysical processes. Calum is originally from Dumfries, in southwest Scotland. He obtained an integrated Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 2013. This was followed by a PhD from the University of Leeds in 2018, which was supervised by Dr Olivier Cayre and Prof. R. Elwyn Isaac. During his PhD, he was split between Biological Sciences and Chemical Engineering. His PhD focused on developing new methods for delivering biopesticides (e.g. peptides and dsRNA) to help control an invasive pest. After completing his doctoral studies, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, as a postdoctoral researcher in 2018. Here, he pioneered the formation of vinyl-based photocatalytic polymers to create responsive photocatalysts. He was then promoted to group leader in 2020 to continue this work. He began the Ferguson group with the first PhD from this group, graduating in 2024. He returned to the UK in April 2022, joining the O’Reilly group at the University of Birmingham as a group leader whilst continuing his role in Germany. In 2024, Calum was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham, where his research group is now located.

Dr Vincenzo Taresco (Secretary) is a Nottingham Research Fellow within the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. He studied industrial chemistry at Sapienza University of Rome (Bachelor and Master, both with honour from 2004-2010), and in the same institution, he was awarded a PhD in polymer chemistry in the Doctorate School of Chemical Science, Vito Volterra in 2014. After a short research period with Prof. Iolanda Francolini at Sapienza University of Rome, Vincenzo moved to his first PDRA position at the University of Nottingham in the School of Pharmacy under the supervision of Prof. Martin Garnett. Always remaining in the School of Pharmacy, in 2017, he moved to a second PDRA position in the group of Prof. Cameron Alexander. In 2019, he took a senior research officer position (group leader) in the group of Prof. Steven Howdle and at the end of 2022, he was awarded a Nottingham Research Fellowship. Taresco’s group research focuses on combining the differentiation of polymer backbone chemistries by adding moieties from bio-renewable sources to deliver more sustainable, chemically sophisticated and multi-responsive polymeric devices (chemical/bio/physical/responsive). These novel “green” and “smart” tools will have an impact in a variety of fields, such as additive manufacturing, agro-food (novel sustainable inks, multifunctional scaffolds, etc.), pharmaceutical and tissue engineering. (https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/chemistry/people/vincenzo.taresco)

Dr Stephen Fielden (Website) is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow within the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham. He completed his MChem at the University of Oxford in 2015. He then undertook his PhD and a postdoc in the group of Prof. David Leigh at the University of Manchester. After this, he moved to Prof. Rachel O’Reilly’s group at the University of Birmingham in 2021. He was subsequently awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship to study polymersome fusion and is now a member of the academic staff at Birmingham. His interests include non-equilibrium chemistry, molecular machines and polymer nanotechnology.

Dr Will Brittain is an Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry at Durham University. Will conducted his PhD studies (awarded 2018) at the University of Birmingham with John Fossey and Ben Buckley (Loughborough) in asymmetric copper catalysis. During this period, Will spent two spells at the University of Texas at Austin in the group of Eric Anslyn where he studied three-component boronic acid assemblies for rapid determination of enantiomeric excess. In 2017 Will moved to Durham University to take up a PDRA position with Steven Cobb, where he worked across multiple peptide/synthesis-based projects before being awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in 2021. Will is also currently the Secretary of the RSC Fluorine Interest Group. Will’s research interest focus on the use of fluorine in organic synthesis, peptide catalysis and synthetic methodology including the development of new polymer architectures. Group website: https://www.wdgbchem.com/

Dr Dan Day is a Lead Research Scientist in the Sustainable Polymers team at Croda. Dan completed an MChem degree at the University of Leicester with an industrial placement year in the composites team at Scott Bader. He then went on to study for a PhD in Prof. Lian Hutchings’ group at Durham University, with industrial sponsorship from Synthomer and Croda. Following this, Dan spent 3 years working at the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York under the supervision of Dr Thomas Farmer on the CHAMPION project with industrial partnership from Unilever, Scott Bader, Stahl, and Orineo. In October 2023, Dan joined Croda where he works on the synthesis of sustainable polymers for applications in consumer care and life sciences.

Dr Maciek Kopeć is a Lecturer at the University of Bath. He received his MEng degree in Polymer Chemistry and Technology from Cracow University of Technology in 2009, followed by a Ph.D. in Materials Science from Jagiellonian University and Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, Poland in 2014. During his Ph.D. he spent six months as a Fulbright Scholar at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA working with Kris Matyjaszewski and Tomek Kowalewski, where he returned as a postdoc in 2014. From 2016 to 2018 he was a Research Fellow in the Materials Science and Technology of Polymers department at the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands. Next, he spent three months at the University of Bristol in the UK before starting his current position at Bath in 2019. His research interests involve polymer gels/networks, degradable and reversible thermosets, controlled radical polymerisation, polymer topology, and polymer-derived carbon materials.

Dr Robert Nixon is a senior PDRA working within the De Bo Research Group at the University of Manchester. He completed his MChem at the University of Manchester in 2016 where he stayed to then acquire a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Guillaume De Bo before carrying on as a PDRA since 2020. His work has primarily focussed on the investigation of using polymer mechanochemistry for the purpose of generating and releasing active molecules from latent species.

Dr Pratik Gurnani completed his MChem at the University of Warwick in 2014 and then went on to complete his PhD at the same institution under the supervision of Prof Sebastien Perrier in 2018, researching new biocompatible nanoparticles for biomedicine applications. Following this, Pratik joined the Prof Cameron Alexander’s group as a Research Fellow at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Nottingham, developing new manufacturable materials for mRNA vaccines to respond to rapidly respond to global pandemics within the EPSRC Future Vaccines Manufacturing Research Hub. Following the successes of his research in this area, Pratik co-led the formulations stream at the University of Nottingham within a new Wellcome Leap research programme in collaboration with Kings College London, Imperial College London and several SME’s to develop a modular ‘biofoundry-in-a-box’ for mRNA synthesis and formulation. In May 2023 Pratik was appointed as a Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Science at the UCL School of Pharmacy where his research programme is focused on developing novel polymer formulations for RNA therapeutics and vaccines.

Dr Julia Rho is a Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at University College London. Julia undertook her MChem degree in Chemistry at the University of Warwick and continued at Warwick to complete her PhD in 2019 under the supervision of Professor Sébastien Perrier. Following this, Julia started her postdoctoral research at the University of Florida under the supervision of Prof. Brent Sumerlin, working on cyclic polymers, complex coacervates and photo-initiated polymerisation. Upon returning to the UK in 2021, she joined the Warwick Medical School to develop new sustainable gene delivery vectors to target agricultural insect pests. In 2023, she joined the University of Birmingham as a Group Leader for Prof. Rachel O'Reilly, covering a broad range of projects from polymer self-assembly, crystallisation, fluorescent dyes to DNA. In 2024, Julia joined the Department of Chemistry at UCL to start her independent research group. Her group focuses on using advanced microscopy to better understand polymeric nanoparticles for gene/drug delivery. 

Dr James Wilson is a Lecturer in Chemistry at Aston University in Birmingham. He completed his PhD with Prof. Andrew Dove at the University of Warwick in 2015 working on sequence-defined ring-opening polymerisation of lactones. Following this, he joined Prof. Matthew Becker’s group at the University of Akron in Ohio, USA as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. In 2018 he began a Marie Sklodowska-Curie/MedTrain/CURAM fellowship in Prof. Andreas Heise’s group at RCSI in Dublin ROI, primarily focusing on the on the synthesis of polycarbonate/polypeptide bioadhesives. He moved to the University of Sheffield in 2020 as a Senior Research Associate followed by Research Fellow, in the Slark group where he focussed on the reversible adhesives from ring-opening copolymerisation. In October 2023, James began his independent career at Aston University researching biomaterials produced from ring-opening polymerisation.

Dr Steven Street is a Lecturer in Soft Matter at the University of Liverpool. He completed his MChem at the University of Reading, graduating in 2011. After a brief period working in industry for a contract-based analytical agrochemical company, he completed his PhD as part of the Bristol Chemical Synthesis Centre for Doctoral Training in 2017 where he worked with Prof. M. Carmen Galan, Dr. Juan-Carlos Morales (CSIC-IPB, Spain) and project sponsor Novartis on carbohydrate-based ligands for G-Quadruplex nucleic acids. During his PhD he also worked with Prof. Jun-Ichi Yoshida (Kyoto, Japan) after winning a JSPS Summer Programme Scholarship. He subsequently obtained an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship to work with Prof. Ian Manners on the synthesis, self-assembly, and nanomedicine applications of polymer nanofibers prepared via crystallization-driven self-assembly (CDSA). This took him to Victoria, Canada, where he was a senior postdoctoral researcher who helped manage the Manners group from 2018-2023. He then returned to the UK to work with Prof. Andrew Dove on the depolymerisation of plastic waste, before moving to Liverpool to start his independent career in 2025. His research interests focus on the synthesis and applications of precision polymer nanomaterials prepared via CDSA and include nanomedicine, hierarchical assembly, and high-throughput experimentation.

Dr. Sam Parkinson is a Tenure Track Research Fellow in Aston Institute for Membrane Excellence at Aston University. Sam undertook his MChem degree in Chemistry at the University of York before moving to the University of Leeds to complete his PhD in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Nicholas Warren. Following this, Sam started his postdoctoral research at the University of Birmingham under the supervision of Prof. Rachel O’Reilly, working on environmentally active polymers and polymer self-assembly. In 2023, Sam moved to the University of Liverpool, under the supervision of Prof. Andy Cooper, working on automated methods for polymer synthesis and characterisation. In 2024, Sam joined the Aston Institute for Membrane Excellence to start his independent research group. His group focuses on developing self-driving laboratories to accelerate the discovery of functional polymeric materials.