Originally from Manchester (UK), Matt did his undergraduate degree at the University of Cambridge, where he started out as a music student, before changing to natural sciences after 1 year. He spent his final year there working in the lab of Prof. David Spring, investigating the application of the intramolecular Heck reaction and ring-closing metathesis to the synthesis of novel and rare heterocyclic scaffolds. After graduating in 2013, Matt moved to Oxford to start his DPhil, which is focussed on the development of a novel pallado-biology strategy, centred around Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling on enzymes, to enhance our understanding of mammalian sugar biosynthesis. He has also worked on other metal-mediated protein modification processes. In his spare time, Matt enjoys both playing and writing classical music, and occasionally blogs about the science behind various aspects of music and musicality, having done this in the past for the university science magazine.

Last updated: 07-04-16