People

Andy Wilson

Professor of Organic Chemistry PhD, BSc (Hons), FRSC, FHEA. Andy received a BSc (Hons) 1st class at The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in 1997 and then undertook his PhD in synthetic chemistry with Professor David A. Leigh FRS on ‘The Controlled Synthesis of Interlocked Architectures’, firstly at UMIST then at The University of Warwick, where he graduated in 2001. He started post-doctoral research at Yale University (USA) with Professor Andrew D. Hamilton FRS on the topic of protein surface recognition, followed by further postdoctoral research with Professors E. W. (Bert) Meijer and Rint P. Sijbesma at Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands) on the topic of supramolecular polymers. In 2004 he took up his first independent academic position as a Research Lecturer at The University of Leeds, where he was promoted to Professor of Organic Chemistry in 2012 and served as Deputy Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology (2012-2018). Andy led the School of Chemistry Undergraduate Medicinal Chemistry Degree programme (2008-2012) and served as Director of Postgraduate Studies (2009-2012). Andy was also co-director of PPI-Net and served as a working group leader in the EU-COST action on Foldamers (2009-2012). Andy was appointed to the EPSRC Physical Sciences Strategic Advisory Team in 2019 and has served on the RSC Chemical Biology and Bioorganic Chemistry Group since 2019. From October 2022 Andy has served as an Editorial Board Member for Communications Chemistry. Andy’s research was recognized internationally by the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry Young Academic Scheme (2012 – runner-up) and through the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Bob Hay Lectureship (2012) and the RSC Norman Heatley Award (2016).

Co-Workers

Amanda Acevedo-Jake

Amanda is a joint postdoctoral research associate with Thomas Edwards focusing on the development and analysis of coiled coil systems for selective recognition, inhibition, and degradation of proteins. She obtained her PhD in 2017 at Rice University working with Prof Jeff Hartgerink on the design and structure of collagen-mimetic peptides. Before joining the Wilson group, she worked on mechanically interlocked mimetic DNA-rotaxanes (University of Southampton, Profs Ali Tavassoli and Stephen Goldup) and then on the design and translational applications of nanofibrous beta sheet hydrogels (New Jersey Institute of Technology, Prof Vivek Kumar).

Chloe Atkins

Chloe graduated with an MChem from Leeds in October 2022 and is working on a joint project with Prof Sheena Radford in Biology. Her project is to develop small molecule inhibitors of amyloid formation and to explore how sequence changes affect amyloid formation using covalent tethering.

Emma Barclay

Emma is a first-year PhD student working with Dr Robin Bon, Dr Martin McPhillie, and Dr Heiko Wurdak, funded by the Dr Simon Waterworth Studentship. She graduated with an MChem in Medicinal and Biological Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 2022, during which she completed a placement in organic chemistry at Jazz Pharmaceuticals. Her project involves the development of small molecule inhibitors of mitochondrial metabolism for the treatment of glioblastoma.

Diana Gimenez-Ibanez

Diana is a postdoctoral research associate working with Andy Wilson and Megan Wright on the development of new tools to understand and influence protein-protein interactions involving intrinsically disordered regions.

Before joining the team in 2021, Diana was a BBSRC research associate at Durham University in Prof. Steven L. Cobb’s group, working on ex-vivo antifungals. Prior to this, Diana completed her PhD in 2019 at Durham University funded through the Marie Curie ITN Fluor21 network on the topic of conformational control of peptoids by means of fluorine and fluorine induced dipolar interactions. Diana was awarded the Biophysical Sciences Institute thesis prize in 2018 for the best thesis, the Durham University Chemistry department Ken Wade award in 2019, and the Berlin Female Young Talent Award of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1349 in 2019. Before coming to the U.K, Diana worked in different technical roles at the University of Valencia and the Institute of Molecular Sciences (Valencia, Spain) where she become engaged with peptides, peptidomimetics and molecular biology techniques.

Eleanor Hilton

Eleanor is a final-year PhD student funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Her collaborative project with Dr Nick warren (School of Chemical and Process Engineering) focuses on reconfigurable polymers using predictable self-sorting cascades. Eleanor studied at the University of Leeds for her MChem, graduating in 2018. Her masters project under the supervision of Dr Paul Thornton investigated the use of poly(amino acids) for drug delivery. After her undergraduate studies, Eleanor spent a year working in industry before returning to the University of Leeds to join the Wilson/Warren groups.

Michael Jinks

Mike is a postdoctoral research associate who joined us in March 2020 to work on Functional Hydrogen Bonded Systems. Mike graduated from the University of Sheffield in 2013 with a first-class honours Master degree in chemistry. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2017, working on the synthesis of artificial information oligomers utilizing both hydrogen bonding and dynamic covalent bonds, under the supervision of Prof Chris Hunter, FRS. In 2017 he joined the group of Professor Steven Goldup at the University of Southampton, working on the synthesis of mechanically planar chiral interlocked molecules with additional work on TADF active materials, in collaboration with Prof Eli Zysman-Colman at the University of St. Andrews and Dr. Thomas Penfold at the University of Newcastle, and on vibrational circular dichroisim, in collaboration with Prof Wybren Jan Buma at the University of Amsterdam.

Aidan Johnson

Aidan is a second-year PhD student working with Dr Robin Bon and Dr Piruthivi Sukumar, funded by the White Rose BBSRC DTP. His project is focused on using chemical biology to study TRPC5 channel regulation in adipocytes. He graduated in Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry (MSci) from the University of Glasgow in 2018. As part of his Masters, he worked on novel antimicrobial lipopeptides at Utrecht University (NL) and cancer-targeting PROTACs in Glasgow.

Anastasija Kulik

Anastasija is a third-year PhD student working with Dr Jennifer Tomlinson and funded through a Royal Society studentship (Inhibition of a protein-protein interaction mediating antibiotic resistance). Anastasija has a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry (University of Huddersfield), as well as, an MRes in Biological Sciences (Vice-Chancellor's Scholarship). Her MRes work focused on structural and biochemical characterization of human genome integrity proteins.

Yue Li

Yue is a second-year PhD student funded by a Leeds-CSC scholarship. Yue received her BSc and MSc from Shenyang Pharmaceutical University in 2017 and 2020, respectively. During her Master's project, she worked as a visiting student at the Beijing Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology to develop coiled-coil-based MERS-CoV fusion inhibitors. Her PhD project focusses on developing modulators of protein-protein interactions involving short linear motifs (SLiMs), using dynamic combinatorial selection methods and peptidomimetic strategies.

Niamh Parkinson

Niamh is a first year PhD student funded through an EPSRC CASE studentship in collaboration with AstraZeneca, focusing on small peptide development to investigate protein-protein interactions in the p53 pathway. Niamh obtained her BSc and MRes in Biological Sciences from the University of Leeds. Her MRes project involved the characterisation of Affimer proteins to understand the role of Son of Sevenless in cancer.

George Preston

George is a Research Fellow working with Andy Wilson and Stuart Warriner. His role involves setting up a platform for chemical proteomics in the School of Chemistry. George did his PhD with Andy Wilson, Alison Ashcroft and Sheena Radford (University of Leeds) on the application of photo-crosslinking to the analysis of amyloid. He went on to work with David H. Phillips (King’s College London) as part of the FP7 EXPOsOMICS project, and then with Tony Whetton and Robert Bristow (University of Manchester) on the use of omics in cancer research. George brings with him experience in biological mass spectrometry.

Chloe Shingler

Chloe is a first-year PhD student funded through an EPSRC CASE studentship in collaboration with LifeArc. Chloe is co-supervised by Dr Megan Wright and Prof Andrew Wilson and is working on developing chemical tools to study intrinsically disordered protein regions. Chloe graduated from the University of Leeds in 2021 with an MChem in Medicinal Chemistry where she spent a year at Pfizer studying hydrogels as drug delivery systems. For her final year project, Chloe worked in the Nelson group synthesising a library of shape diverse fragment-like molecules using C-H arylation.

Martin Walko

Martin is a senior postdoctoral research associate investigating (i) the development of peptides to understand and modulate protein-protein interactions and (ii) new reagents for protein labelling as part of the BBSRC-funded SPIDR project with Dr Megan Wright. Martin spent his PhD years at the University of Groningen (Nl) under the guidance of Prof Ben L. Feringa working on molecular switches.  Since 2005 he worked as a research at P.J.Safarik University in Kosice (Sl) excerpt for the period 2010-2015 when he studied protein channel opening using chemical biology methods in Groningen.

Peiyu Zhang

Peiyu is a final-year PhD student funded through a Leeds-CSC scholarship. Peiyu obtained his BSc at Shenyang Pharmaceutical University in 2016 and then completed his MSc at Shenyang Pharmaceutical University in 2019. During his masters project, he worked as a visiting student at Beijing Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology to develop peptide-based MERS-CoV fusion inhibitors using all-hydrocarbon stapled peptides. His PhD project is focused on the discovery of protein-protein interaction inhibitors using peptidomimetic approaches.

Jiaxin Zhao

Jiaxin is a first-year PhD student funded by a Leeds-CSC scholarship and working on responsive polymer materials under the joint supervision of Dr Johan Mattsson and Professor Andrew Wilson. Jiaxin received a BSc in Materials Science and Engineering from The University of Jinan in 2018 and an MSc in Materials Engineering from Shandong University in 2021. Jiaxin's research during this period focussed on silicone materials such as silicone resins and silicone rubbers. During his studies Jiaxin worked with the School and Hospital of Stomatology (Shangdong) to develop a new antibacterial self-repairing dental resin. Jiaxin also collaborated with the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Shangdong) to prepare novel chalcone derivatives with bioimaging and apoptosis-promoting properties.