Teaching
Recent lecture courses
• Core Carbonyl Chemistry (1st year)
• Organic Synthesis I (2nd year)
• Advanced Synthesis and Total Synthesis (3rd year)
• Radicals, Radical Cations and Radical Anions (CDT)
Protecting Group Chemistry
(Oxford Chemistry Primers, #95, OUP)
This is primarily about functional group reactivity and mechanism organised around the reaction conditions that result in protecting group cleavage.
Department Professor of Chemistry and DGS for Organic Chemistry & Chemical Biology
College Tutorial Fellow in Organic Chemistry
M.A. (1987), D.Phil. (1990) with Prof. Sir Jack Baldwin, Oxford
Post doc. (1990–1992) with Prof. Gilbert Stork, Columbia University, NY
Research
My group's independent research began in the Dyson Perrins Laboratory (1992) then transferred across South Parks Road to the Chemistry Research Laboratory (CRL) in February 2004. I am one of the founding group leaders at the Oxford Suzhou Centre for Advanced Research (OSCAR), our research starting there in January 2020
In 2012 I co-founded OxSynC to connect external researchers with Oxford's synthetic chemists
Our main focus now is a large collaborative effort with Professor Luet Wong's group aiming to streamline organic synthesis through strategic application of engineered enzymes which effect C–H hydroxylation. Targets include: natural products, key intermediates for drugs, drug fragment molecules, and (bio)isosteres. The group's earlier research centred on natural product total synthesis, especially compounds with relevance to cancer chemotherapy, neurodegenerative disorders, and enhancing cognition. We continue to explore mechanism-based hypotheses in order to discover new chemistry and gain further insights into factors controlling selectivity and efficiency. In a collaboration with Professor Kieran Clarke here and Dr Richard Veech at the NIH, we developed a chemoenzymatic synthesis of a nutraceutical – deltaG® – available for purchase from the spin-out company TdeltaS.
The final D.Phil. students graduated from our group earlier in 2025 but contact me should you be interested in a post-doctoral position either in Oxford or Suzhou. See also here.