Group

Pike Group summer day out in Leamington. Celebrating RSC prizes and Exam results.

Current Group

Post-doctoral Research Associates

Stephen Brown 2020-

Callum Rosenberg 2024-

Stephen is studying Ce-oxo clusters, exploring the similarities of these molecular species with bulk CeO2, and preparing new catalytic materials.

Calum studied at the University of Birmingham with the Champness Group for his PhD. His current project is exploring proton coupled electron transfer and photochemistry in Ce and Ti oxo clusters

PhD Students

Ashwani Chikara 2022-	Eniola Sokalu 2022-
Ashwani is a Eutopia-cotutelle PhD Student collaborating with Prof Frank De proft and Prof Frederik Tielens in Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His project focusses on optimising Ti-oxo cluster based materials for photocatalysis	Eniola is using electrodeposition to prepare materials for photoelectrocatalysis, including catalysts that can initiate isotope separation through selective hydrogen evolution processes. Eniola is co-supervised by Prof. K. Brinkert (Uni Bremen)
Jack Beall 2023-	Ali Safavi 2023-
Jack is investigating the synthesis, electronic structure and photochemistry of Fe(III)-oxo clusters. Studying how the role of size effects in solar absorbing materials.	Ali is completing his PhD in Physics with Prof. Nick Hine. His project investigates the electronic structure of Fe-oxo clusters using advanced computational methods.
Alex Webster-Hirst 2024-	Katie Sharrock 2024-
Alex is studying the formation of metal-organic-frameworks. Alex is also interested in studying chemical changes in MOFs using advances diffraction techniques.	Katie is investigating the photoreactivity of Ti-oxo clusters with small molecules and exploring their use for photocatalytic processes.

Master's Students

Amina is studying the synthesis of bimetallic Sn-oxo clusters, exploring new routes to materials for touch screen devices.

Previous Group Members

PDRA

Ananthu Rajan (2022/23)

PhD students

Haijiao Lu (2017-19) visiting from Tianjin University –> Postdoc Australian National University --> DECRA fellowship University of Queensland

Seb, Josh, Rebecca and Haijiao 2018

MChem & MSc students

Nicky Chan (2023/24)

Alexandria Hands (2022/2023) --> PhD, Raval Group University of Liverpool

Emanuele Vismara (2021/22) --> Marketing for new battery technologies, Green Energy Storage

Ryan Andrews (2021/22) --> Software Development, Civil Service

Joanna Mantaloufa (2021) --> Research Assistant, Macpherson Group, Warwick

Ajanthan Panchalingam (2021)

Alex Veale (2020-21) —> Research & Development, SunChemical

Kinran Lau (2018-19) –> PhD with IMPRS-SurMat at the University of Duisburg-Essen, supervised by Prof. Stephan Barcikowski and Prof. Martin Muhler

Jack Payne (2018-2019) --> Renewable Connections (solar and battery energy storage)

Rebecca Murray-Watson (2017-18) —> PhD Imperial College London

Joshua Du Plooy (2017-18) —> Strategy Consultant, Deloitte

Research Day Out 2024 with the Yeung Group in Birmingham.

Celebrating Nicky finishing his degree and Stephen's JACS paper

Christmas with the Greenhalgh and Brinkert groups

Research day with the Jupp Group

Stephen presents at the Synthesis and Catalysis Seminar Series

Tom braves the steps to the top of Warwick's 1.0 GHz SSNMR spectrometer

Master's Project Stories

Ryan Andrews joined the group in 2021/2022 with a project investigating the mechanism of photoredox reactivity of Ti-oxo clusters. Ryan synthesised new clusters and used them to understand photochemical pathways. His research contributed to a research article which was submitted to a leading journal soon after his project finished.

Alex Veale completed his MChem project in 2021. Alex studied the synthesis of brand new Ti-oxo clusters, using new techniques to functionalise the surface of these clusters whilst retaining the core cluster structure. Alex's new compounds undergo photochemical excitation and following Alex's project the group are now studying the EPR spectroscopy of these intriguing compounds.

Rebecca Murray-Watson studied organocopper chemistry as precursors for Cu based nanomaterials. During Rebecca's project she uncovered the crystal structure of an organocopper coordination polymer, a structure which had eluded full structural characterisation for over 50 years! Rebecca's work is published in organometallics.