Current Members

Professor Sébastien Perrier

Sébastien graduated with his PhD in 2002 from the University of Warwick, England, in polymer chemistry. After one year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New South Wales, Australia, he was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK. In October 2007, he moved to the University of Sydney and was appointed as director of the Key Centre for Polymers & Colloids. Sébastien leads a team of 15-20 researchers working on the design of a wide range of state-of-the-art functional polymeric materials by careful manipulation of their molecular structure. He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Soft Matter, Macromolecules, European Polymer Journal and Polymer Chemistry, a member of the RACI Polymer Division executive committee (2011 Chair), and was appointed on the Australian Research Council College of Experts in 2011. Awards include the Macro Group UK Young Researcher Award (2006), the Young Tall Poppy Science Award (2009), the Rennie Memorial Medal (2009), the David Sangster Polymer Science and Technology Award (2009), the Le Fèvre Memorial Prize (2013) and the RS Wolfson Award (2014).

Postdoctoral researchers

Dr Min Zeng

Min completed his bachelor's degree in Polymer Materials and Engineering at the Hefei University of Technology. He then went on to obtain his PhD at the Tsinghua University under the supervision of Prof. Jinying Yuan, which focused on polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA), stimuli-responsive polymers and self-assembly of block copolymers. In 2022, Min joins the Perrier group as a post-doctoral researcher to work with supramolecular cyclic peptide-polymer conjugates.

Dr Santhosh Kalash Rajendrakumar

Santhosh Kalash Rajendrakumar got his bachelor’s degree in biotechnology and master’s degree in Molecular Medicine from India. With a fellowship from Brain Korea 21 (BK21), he completed his PhD in Biomedical Sciences from Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea, in 2019. Later that year, he joined as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Medicine, Renal Division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Then in 2020, he moved to Tufts University, Massachusetts, United States, to work on lipidoid nanoparticles for mRNA delivery in lung cancer. In 2021, he joined the Perrier research team as an Assistant Professor (research) to develop RAFT polymeric nanoparticles for cancer immunotherapy and anti-inflammation.

Dr Pooja Agarwal

Pooja Agarwal completed her PhD in 2016 from Central Drug Research Institute, India, after getting a fellowship from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR, India). She worked under the supervision of Dr. Manju Yashoda Krishnan and mainly focused on the persistence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis(Mtb) in adipose tissue. After completing her PhD, she joined as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof Valerie Mizrahi at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. There she worked on a project involving Mtb and its interaction with foamy macrophages. During her postdoc, she got Santander Universities Mobility Award to work with Dr Fernando Martinez Estrada as a part of a collaboration at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom. She also got selected for Oppenheimer Fund - Academic Exchange programme to support her visit at the University of Oxford, the United Kingdom, with Prof Siamon Gordan. She joined the University of Warwick in 2022 as a Research Fellow in the Monash Warwick Alliance-AMR Training Programme in Emerging Superbug Threats to work on an interdisciplinary project. She jointly works with Prof Sebastian Perrier and Dr Meera Unnikrishnan (Medical School). Here, she will work on a project that aims to develop novel nanoparticle-based approaches to target intracellular human pathogens like Mtb and Staphylococcus aureus using relevant in vitro and in vivo infection models.

Dr Joaquin Sanchis-Martinez

Joaquin Sanchis-Martinez graduated in Chemistry from the University of Valencia (Spain) and obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry in 2005 in the group of Prof. Ana Costero in the same University. After his doctoral degree, he held a contract research position at BASF AG (Ludwigshafen, Germany). In 2006, he joined Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Mülheim and der Ruhr, Germany) as a post-doctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Manfred Reetz, focusing on Biocatalysis and Enzyme Engineering by directed evolution. In 2009, he started developing polymer-drug conjugate nanomedicines with application in the treatment of cancer at the Prof. Maria Vicent’s Polymer Therapeutics Lab in the Biomedical Research Center Principe Felipe (CIPF) in Valencia (Spain). In the same year, he visited Prof. Carlos Barbas III in The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA, US) for a 3-month training period in the synthesis and characterization of Zinc Fingers. In 2011, he combined his position at CIPF with a part-time associate lecturer appointment at the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Valencia. In 2014 he joined the group of Prof. Sébastien Perrier as a Research Fellow and is now involved in the University of Warwick – Monash University alliance, leading Prof. Perrier’s research team in Melbourne. His research interest focuses on the application of functionalized tubular structures as carriers for drug-delivery to selective tissues or biological compartments in the human body.

Postgraduate researchers

Year Four

Sophie Hill

Sophie graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry (MChem) in 2018. Her Master's project was completed under the supervision of Dr Simon Webb and investigated self-assembly of sulphur based lipids for the examination of prebiotic evolutionary concepts. She recently started her PhD under the supervision of Professor Sebastien Perrier on a collaborative project with AstraZeneca, focusing on cyclic peptide-polymer conjugates and their applications for drug delivery.

Maria Kariuki

Having completed a Forensic Science BSc degree at Keele University, Maria joined the University of Warwick in 2017 to pursue an MSc in Analytical Sciences. Under the supervision of Sebastien Perrier, she started her research project aimed at systematically characterising self-assembled cyclic peptide-polymer conjugates. Chromatographic and light scattering techniques were employed to monitor the effects of sample treatments on the stability of the conjugates. She then shortly after began her PhD (Oct 2018) where she will continue to focus on the characterisation of the conjugates using softer techniques (Field Flow Fractionation) so as to gain more information on their assembly mechanisms.

Hannah Burnage

Hannah completed her BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Warwick in 2018. She then started the MAS CDT course and completed her Master’s in 2019. Her thesis research project was focused on using GPC to monitor polymerisation reactions, under the supervision of David Haddleton. In 2019 she began her PhD under the supervision of Sébastien Perrier making and characterising nanoparticles.

Zihe Cheng

Zihe Cheng obtained her Bachelor of Applied Chemistry from Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (China) in 2017. In September 2018, she came to the University of Warwick to study for a postgraduate MSc in Polymer Chemistry. In April 2019, she did her Master’s project under the supervision of Professor Sebastien Perrier and Dr. Qiao Song on the self-assembling behaviour of cyclic peptide – polymer conjugates. In the same year, she starts her PhD research in the Perrier group, focusing on the amphiphilic cyclic peptide-polymer conjugates and their second self-assembly of tubisomes.

Vito Kontrimas

Vito graduated with MPharm degree at the Reading School of Pharmacy in 2016. His thesis focus was to investigate the in-vitro effect of carbon monoxide on Alzheimer’s disease. After graduation, Vito also completed his pharmacy pre-registration training at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, before joining MRC DTP in IBR course at the University of Warwick to pursue his academic interests. During the MRC DTP in IBR course, Vito has been involved in two mini-projects: 1) “pH-responsive polymeric nanoparticles for drug delivery” in Perrier’s group 2) “The impacts of daratumumab kinetics in Multiple Myeloma” supervised by Prof. Mike Chappell. Recently, Vito has joined the Perrier group as a PhD to work on the development of multifunctional polymeric drug delivery systems for penetrating the blood-brain barrier.

Year Three

Magda Beres (Przybyla)

Magda completed her BSc at the University of Warwick in 2020. During her studies, she undertook a summer project in the Perrier group working on 4-vinylbenzyl chloride macroinitiator for the synthesis of POx brushes. The following summer she joined Waterfield group at Warwick Medical School to work on reconstituting bacterial injection systems for use in drug delivery. In September 2020 Magda started her PhD under the supervision of prof. Sébastien Perrier, sponsored by Lubrizol. Magda’s project will focus on RAFT iniferter polymerisation.

Sophie Laroque

Sophie completed her bachelor and master degree in chemistry at Humboldt University. For her bachelor thesis, she investigated the triple helix formation of collagen mimetic peptides, under the supervision of Prof. Hans Boerner. Afterwards, she spent 6 months at Warwick University for a research internship as part of her master degree in the group of Sebastien Perrier, working on emulsion polymerisation and polymerisation-induced self-assembly to generate pH-responsive nanoparticles. Finally, for her master thesis, she worked under the supervision of Dr. Matthias Hartlieb and Prof. Alexander Boeker at Potsdam University and Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research on the synthesis of antimicrobial bottle brush polymers. In 2020 she started her PhD under the supervision of Sébastien Perrier and Katherine Locock (CSIRO), working on antimicrobial star polymers.

Ruth (JJ) Awodipe

JJ completed her bachelor degree in Biomedical Research at the University of Birmingham. During that time, she carried out a summer project and a final year project under the supervision of Dr Andrew Holmes and Dr Michelle Buckner respectively. She then joined the MRC DTP in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research (IBR) at the University of Warwick where she completed two mini-projects as part of her MSc. JJ has now started her PhD under the supervision of Professor Meera Unnikrishnan and Professor Sébastien Perrier. Her research focuses on characterising intracellular S. aureus and targeting the bacteria using polymers.

Year Two

Meshari Alqarni

Meshari completed his MSc at the University of Warwick in 2020. He carried out his Master’s project under the supervision of Dr Remzi Becer which his thesis research project was focused on Single Chain Polymer Nanoparticles (SCNP). Recently, Meshari has joined the Perrier group as a PhD to work on encapsulation of nanoparticles by RAFT polymerization in non-polar solvent.

Lena Dalal

Lena completed both her bachelor degree in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Chemistry and her Masters in Industrial Pharmacy at Damascus University, Syria. She performed an internship at UNIPHARMA pharmaceutical Industries while attending her degree. Lena is also a registered pharmacist in Syria, participated in many national conferences, and worked as a full-time teaching staff at Arab International University, Syria. She recently published her master thesis at Scientific Reports on the use of Self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems to enhance drug solubility. Lena recently started her PhD under the supervision of Professor Sébastien Perrier to explore the prospects of various polymers as novel antifungal agents.

Iona McIntyre

Iona graduated with a BSc Biochemistry degree from the University of Warwick in 2020. After graduation, Iona joined the MRC DTP Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research course at Warwick Medical School as an iCASE student working in collaboration with her industry partner, Ferring Pharmaceuticals. Iona’s iCASE project is a four-year MSc and PhD titled “Modifying macrophage phenotype as a potential treatment for endometriosis”. During her MSc year, Iona worked on two introductory research projects to begin this work: 1) Treating endometriosis at the nanoscale: nanovectors for macrophage targeting and drug delivery, supervised by Prof Sébastien Perrier and 2) Modifying macrophage phenotype as a potential treatment for endometriosis, supervised by A/prof Erin Greaves. Iona’s current work involves using macrophage immunotherapies, polymeric nanoparticles and bioinformatics; to develop novel therapeutics for endometriosis.

Year One

Esther Udobang

A first-class BSc. graduate from Bells University of Technology in Nigeria, Esther joins the Perrier group for her doctorate research on synthesis of polymeric nanoparticles as delivery solution in gene therapy. Her interest in this area stems from her Master's research in Biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles as novel antimicrobial agents targeting a selection of multidrug resistant strains of bacteria, and thus research has been published in a reputable journal.

Tasha Reddy

Tasha completed her BSc with Professional Training Year (PTY) in Medical Sciences at the University of Exeter in 2021. Her PTY placement was with the Islet Biology Exeter team under the supervision of Dr Mark Russell. Her dissertation under the supervision of Dr Tetsu Kudoh. She joined the University of Warwick in 2021 on the MRC DTP in IBR course. During the MSc Tasha completed 2 mini-projects; 1) In the Perrier group synthesising cationic polymers to exert antimicrobial effects, 2) In the Crow group investigating a novel tripartite efflux pump. In 2022 Tasha started her PhD under the supervision of Professor Sébastien Perrier and Dr Freya Harrison. Her project will use an interdisciplinary approach combining polymer chemistry and microbiology to explore synergetic polymer/antibiotic systems for the treatment of biofilm infections.

Alexandre Soares Gomes

Alex completed his MChem at Durham University in 2022. During his final year, he undertook an industrial placement at the Lubrizol Corporation under the supervision of Dr Nathan Bartlett and Dr William Barton working on the development of ashless antioxidants for application in automotive and industrial lubricants. In October 2022 Alex started his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Sébastien Perrier as part of a collaborative EPSRC Prosperity Partnership project between Lubrizol and the Universities of Warwick and Nottingham. Alex’s project will focus on polymer synthesis in continuous flow reactors.

Mingchao Li

Mingchao completed his master's degree in Biomedical Engineering at the South China Normal University, which focused on the development of brain gene delivery systems for Parkinson disease. The systems were designed based on the blood brain barrier (BBB) mechanisms to transport gene across the BBB into brain. The gene vectors include magnesium oxide, zinc oxide and ferric oxide. He then worked for a biotech company as a senior project director where he was responsible for clinical project development and clinical trial operations. In 2022, Mingchao joins the Perrier group as a PhD to work on polymeric nanoparticles and their applications for drug delivery.

MChem Students

Nicolas Dickmann

Nico is currently in year 4 of his MChem at the university of Warwick. He worked in Dusseldorf in his third year at Henkel. Whilst there he worked in product development in the adhesive sector where he worked on creating a re-closable adhesive to be used in food packaging. He is now working in Prof. Perrier research group where he is attempting to increase the stability of cyclic peptide nanotubes by adding Urea groups to the peptide to increase the hydrogen bonding within the structure.

Jiuli Xu

Jiuli obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Warwick in 2022. At the same year, Jiuli starts his Master by Research under the supervision of Professor Sébastien Perrier, focusing on synthesis and design of cationic polymer for gene delivery.

Haoyan Chen

Haoyan completed his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Warwick in 2022. At the same time, he started his Chem degree project. Haoyan is now working in Professor Sébastien Perrier research group, with a project of synthesizing anti-inflammatory polymer.

Prof Sébastien Perrier

Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr Min Zeng
Dr Santhosh Kalash Rajendrakumar
Dr Pooja Agarwal
Dr Joaquin Sanchis-Martinez

Postgraduate Researchers

Sophie Hill
Maria Kariuki
Hannah Burnage
Zihe Cheng
Vito Kontrimas
Magda Beres (Przybyla)
Sophie Laroque
Ruth (JJ) Awodipe
Meshari Alqarni
Lena Dalal
Iona McIntyre
Esther Udobang
Tasha Reddy
Alexandre Soares Gomes
Mingchao Li

MChem Researchers

Nicolas Dickmann
Jiuli Xu
Haoyan Chen