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 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 Stephen Hall

Stephen obtained his Bachelors degree in biochemistry from the University of Birmingham in 2014. Following this, he undertook a PhD jointly between the labs of Prof. Tim Dafforn at the University of Birmingham and Dr Thomas Arnold at Diamond Light Source. During this time, he predominantly worked on the self-assembly of poly(styrene-co-maleic acid)-stabilised phospholipid nanodiscs and their interaction with supported lipid bilayers using a range of spectroscopic, light, X-ray and neutron scattering techniques. He also worked closely with Dr Tim Knowles at the University of Birmingham and Dr Luke Clifton at the ISIS Neutron and Muon source to investigate outer membrane biogenesis in Gram-negative bacteria. After completing his PhD in 2018, Stephen joined the Perrier group as a postdoctoral research fellow to investigate the interaction of cyclic peptide-polymer conjugates with biomimetic membranes.

Dr Alexia Hapeshi

Alexia obtained a BA (Hons) and MSci in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and then completed her PhD in 2013 in the lab of Jose Vasquez-Boland at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focused on the virulence mechanisms of the bacterial pathogen Rhodococcus equi, studying the interaction between the host and the pathogen and working towards vaccine development. In 2014 she moved to the University of Warwick to work as a Research Fellow in Nick Waterfield’s group where she continued studying the basis of the evolution of pathogenesis in bacteria. Her research then shifted to the study of the mechanisms of action of natural and synthetic antimicrobial compounds as well as the use of bacterial systems for drug delivery. In 2019 she joined Prof Sébastien Perrier’s group to work on the biological applications of synthetic polymers.

Andrew Kerr

Andrew completed his MChem at the University of York in 2014. His Masters Research project was carried out at Bayer Cropscience in Frankfurt, Germany under the supervision of Dr. Stephen Lindell were he investigated cycloaddition chemistry in the synthesis of herbicides. In March 2015 he began his PhD at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Prof. Sébastien Perrier. His project was sponsored by Lubrizol and focused on the synthesis of complex bottle-brush polymer architectures by RAFT and their application as friction modifiers or drug delivery vectors. After finishing his PhD in 2019 he is continuing as a postdoctoral research fellow in the group.

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 in 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 in the application of functionalized tubular structures as carriers for drug-delivery to selective tissues or biological compartments in the human body.

Dr Qiao Song

Qiao Song obtained his bachelor degree from the Department of Chemical Engineering in Tsinghua University (China) in 2012. In the same year, he started his PhD research in the Department of Chemistry in the same university, under the supervision of Prof Xi Zhang, working on the fabrication of supramolecular polymers and polymeric materials based on supramonomer, as well as supramolecular radicals. After he obtained his PhD in 2017, Qiao joined the Perrier group as a postdoctoral research fellow to study the self-assembling behaviour and biomedical application of cyclic peptide – polymer conjugates.

Dr Jie Yang

Jie Yang received his Bachelor of Applied Chemistry from Hefei University of Technology (China) in 2012. Then he joined the supramolecular chemistry research group at Zhejiang University (China) and obtained his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Feihe Huang, working on the construction of functional supramolecular amphiphiles and novel supramolecular polymeric materials. In 2017, Jie started a two years postdoctoral fellow position in Prof. Sébastien Perrier’s research group at the University of Warwick, under a Marie Curie Fellowship Scheme, to study the stimuli responsive tubular supramolecular polymer brushes aiming for biomedical applications.

Postgraduate researchers

Year Four

Sean Ellacott

Sean completed his MSc in Chemistry in 2016 at Chimie ParisTech with a specialization in Medicinal chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the School of Pharmacy of Université Paris Descartes (France). His first research project was dealing with the synthesis of reducible polymeric structures for vaccine delivery. He carried it out at the CSIRO in Melbourne (Australia), under the supervision of Dr. Almar Postma. He then had the opportunity to do research at the Servier laboratories in Croissy-sur-Seine (France) on the synthesis of an anti-cancer drug. He recently started his PhD at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Prof. Sébastien Perrier, where he is working on the design of cyclic peptide-polymer nanotubes for drug delivery purposes.

Year Three

Fannie Burgevin

Fannie completed her MSc at CPE Lyon and université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 in 2017. Specialized in polymer chemistry and materials, she did her master project at c2p2 under the supervision of Dr Murie Lansalot and Franck D'Agosto and investigated RAFT polymerization of vinyl acetate and application to polymerization-induced self-assembly. In October 2017 she started her PhD at University of Warwick under the supervision of Prof. Sebastien Perrier, investigating functional polymers for RNA delivery.

Thomas Floyd

Thomas graduated from the University of Warwick in 2016, with a degree in Chemistry with Industrial Experience. His MChem project was carried out under the supervision of Professor Sébastien Perrier, where he investigated the synthesis of hyperstar polymers. During his undergraduate degree, Thomas also undertook research projects under the supervision of Professor Rachel O’Reilly (University of Warwick) and Professor Marcus Wilhelmsson (Chalmers University of Technology). After graduating, Thomas joined the company Interface Polymers, where he worked for a year developing the scale-up processes of a polyolefin block copolymer synthesis. Thomas’ PhD will focus on the development of complex architectures of poly(2-oxazoline)-co-poly(ethylenimine) for use in non-viral gene transfection.

Satu Häkkinen

Satu graduated with MSc in Polymer Chemistry from the University of Helsinki in November 2017. She carried out her Master’s project under the supervision of Professor Heikki Tenhu, while also working as a research assistant in the Polymers and Colloids research group. The subject of her thesis was polymerization-induced self-assembly via RAFT aqueous emulsion polymerization, and the project involved the development and investigation of a new PISA formulation. In January 2018, she began her PhD in the Perrier group, studying the synthesis and properties of brush polymers for Lubrizol.

Robert Richardson

Robert graduated with a 1st class degree in Chemistry (Mchem) at the University of Warwick in 2017. His Master’s thesis, under the supervision of Sébastien Perrier, focused on the preparation of pH responsive polymer nanoparticles for targeted drug release. Robert began his PhD under the supervision of Sébastien Perrier focusing on RAFT emulsion polymerisation.

Year Two

Ramon Garcia Maset

Ramon Garcia Maset completed his bachelor degree in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Valencia, Spain. He performed additional internships while attending to his degree in the Pharmacodynamics and Microbiology departments. He decided to improve his knowledge of next-generation sequencing and microbiology infection so he did an internship at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, under the supervision of the Dr Justin O'Grady (Senior Lecturer in Microbiology at Medical School UEA) and the Professor John Wain, and he worked on a project in collaboration with Grifols and the University of East Anglia to develop a point of care diagnose method to reduce the diagnose turnaround time of patients suffering from sepsis, pneumonia and urinary tract infections. He coursed IBR master funded by the MRC DTP at Warwick University where he widely increased his interdisciplinary knowledge about biosciences. He recently started his PhD under the supervision of Professor Sebastien Perrier and Dr Freya Harrison, an interdisciplinary approach in polymer chemistry and microbiology to exploit antimicrobial agents against biofilms.

Sophie Hill

Sophie graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry (MChem) in 2018. Her Masters project was completed under the supervision of Dr Simon Webb and investigated self assembly of sulphur based lipids for 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 to 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.

Maryam Obaid

Maryam holds a BSc in Pharmacy from Amman Ahliyah University, Amman, Jordan as the highest score graduate with distinction. Afterwards she served in community pharmacy until 2014, when she started her MSc course in Pharmacology and graduated in 2015 from the University of Brighton, with distinction. Maryam has joined our group in October 2018. Her current PhD research, sponsored by the Chancellor's international scholarship, is focused on Cancer chronotherapy and nanomedicine.

Year One

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 behavior 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 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 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 development of multifunctional polymeric drug delivery systems for penetrating the blood-brain barrier.

MChem Researchers

Sam Brashaw

Sam is a Fourth Year MChem Student at the University of Warwick. His project is looking into cyclic peptide - polymer conjugates.

Holly Buchan

Holly is studying for a MChem in Chemistry at the University of Warwick. In October 2019, she started her masters project on pH responsive cyclic peptide nanotubes, under the supervision of Prof. Sebastian Perrier and Dr. Qiao Song.

Manisha Pandey

Manisha is a fourth year Chemistry Student and carrying out her MChem project, under the supervision of Ramon Garcia Maset, working on developing polymeric structures as effective antimicrobial agents.

Master Researchers

Manpreet Kaur

Manpreet Kaur completed her BSc Chemistry degree at the University of Warwick in 2019 specialising in polymer and bioorganic chemistry. In September 2019, she began her Masters by Research degree in Chemistry under the supervision of Professor Sebastien Perrier. Her project focuses on making PEG nanoparticles for applications in drug delivery.

Visiting Students

Maxime Michelas

Maxime obtained his master degree of Polymer Chemistry for advanced technologies from University Grenoble Alpes, France. He joined our group as an intern student in September 2019 under the supervision of Prof. Sebastien Perrier and Dr. Jie Yang. His project focuses in the fabrication of photo-responsive tubular nanoaggregates from cyclic peptide polymer conjugates and their further applications in controlled drug delivery.

Jiajia Li

Jiajia Li completed his bachelor degree in Chemistry at Soochow University, China. Shortly after he began his PhD at Soochow University in September 2015 focusing on photo-RAFT polymerization utilizing direct photolysis of various RAFT agents under visible light. In January 2019, he joined the Sebastien Perrier’s group as a one year visiting PhD student. He is now focusing on photo polymerization induced self-assembly (PISA) and photo-induced cationic polymerization in the presence of manganese carbonyl.

Prof Sébastien Perrier

Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr Stephen Hall
Dr Alexia Hapeshi
Dr Andrew Kerr
Dr Joaquin Sanchis-Martinez
Dr Qiao Song
Dr Jie Yang

Postgraduate Researchers

Sean Ellacott
Fannie Burgevin
Thomas Floyd
Satu Häkkinen
Robert Richardson
Ramon Garcia Maset
Sophie Hill
Maria Kariuki
Maryam Obaid
Hannah Burnage
Zihe Cheng
Vito Kontrimas

MChem Researchers

Sam Brashaw
Holly Buchan
Manisha Pandey

Masters Researchers

Manpreet Kaur

Visiting Students

Maxime Michelas
Jiajia Li