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Group Members
Dr Ai-Lan Lee
Ai-Lan graduated with an MSci (Hons) in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge (Selwyn) and the University Emeleus Prize for Distinction in Inorganic Chemistry (2000). She remained at Cambridge for her PhD studies, working under the supervision of Prof. Steven V. Ley CBE FRS FMedSci from 2000-2003. She was subsequently awarded a Lindemann Trust Fellowship in 2004 to work at Boston College, USA, with Prof. Amir H. Hoveyda and Prof. Richard R. Schrock (MIT). In 2006, Ai-Lan was appointed as a fixed-term Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, carrying out research with Prof. David A. Leigh FRS FRSE. She was appointed as a lecturer at Heriot-Watt University in October 2007 and was promoted to Reader (Associate Professor) in 2013.
David Mooney
David graduated with an MSci (Hons) in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Glasgow in 2020. During his MSci degree, David completed an industrial placement year at AstraZeneca (Macclesfield) as well as completing a masters project in the France group. He is currently a third year PhD student funded by AstraZeneca/EPSRC, working on decarboxylative C-H functionalisation of heterocycles. Besides chemistry, David enjoys hiking, going to the gym as well as watching and playing football.
David Kitcatt
David graduated from the University of Bath in 2020 with MChem Chemistry for Drug Discovery, which included an industrial placement at the Francis Crick Institute. He is currently a second year PhD student working on the EPSRC iCASE programme in partnership with GSK, researching metal-, catalyst-, light- and electrolysis-free decarboxylative radical reactions. When not doing chemistry, David enjoys writing music, watching films, playing board/video games and reading.
Sam Nickels
Sam graduated Heriot-Watt in 2023 with a MChem in Chemistry, during which he spent a year abroad at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg in Germany. He is a first year PhD student working on automated flow synthesis of photocatalytic reactions in collaboration with Vapourtec Ltd. and the Vilela and Mota research groups
Eva Pogacar
Eva is a final year MChem in Chemistry project student. She is interested in organic synthesis in pharmaceutical field and is currently working on light- mediated radical cyclisation reactions.
Zac Orr
Zac is a final year MChem in Chemistry with Pharmaceutical Chemistry student. He is interested in applying organic synthesis to pharmaceutical and peptide chemistry. His MChem project is on developing light-mediated radical reactions.