Dalton2023
Back row: Katherine, Amanda, Graham, Arush,
Front row: Evelina, Isabeau, Eva, Gourab, Xinyue
Christmas 2022
Niveda, Katie, Eva, Xinyue, Isabeau, Evelina, Dan, Arush, Amanda, Graham, Gourab, Katherine
Summer BBQ 2022
Amanda, Katherine, Isabeau, Evelina, Eva, Botond, Gourab, Catherine, Xinyue, Arush, Thomas, Anette
Summer BBQ 2021
Arush, Evelina, Dan, Irati, Isabeau, Amanda, George, Eva, Richard
Dr Amanda Jarvis
Amanda obtained her MChem from the University of St Andrews (UK) and received a PhD from the University of York (UK). After this she conducted postdoctoral research in the Dauban group (ICSN, Gif-sur-Yvette) and the Kamer group (St Andrews, UK). In 2015, she received a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship to continue working in Prof. Paul Kamer’s group on Artificial Metalloenzymes for the Oxidation of Alkanes (ArtOxiZymes). In 2017 she started her independent career as a Christina Miller Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and was awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship in 2019. In 2022, she was promoted to Senior Lecturer.
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Present members
Dr Chris Thomson, Postdoc
Chris completed his MChem Chemistry with Biochemistry degree at Heriot-Watt University in 2018 and was awarded the William H. Perkin Prize for excellence in organic chemistry. He then joined the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Critical Resource Catalysis (CRITICAT), spending 6-months training at the University of St Andrew before returning to Heriot-Watt University to complete his PhD studies in ‘enabling technologies for heterogeneous photocatalysis’ under the joint supervision of Dr Filipe Vilela and Dr Ai-Lan Lee. After completing his PhD in 2022, he joined the Jarvis Group as a post-doctoral research associate to develop artificial metalloenzymes as stereoselective photocatalysts.
Mingyu Liu, EastBio PhD student
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Marta Chronowska , EastBio PhD student
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Katherine Macfarlane, EaSiCat/iBioIC PhD student
Katherine grew up in Edinburgh and gained an MChem in Medicinal and Biological Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 2019. In her final year project she synthesised self-assembled co-ordination cages for biomedical applications and during a 12-month placement at Johnson Matthey (JM) Edinburgh she developed HPLC methods for the detection of APIs. Katherine then joined JM Stockton in the north-east of England to develop process technologies using catalysis. She joined the Jarvis group in October 2021 to work in collaboration with the Wallace lab and Johnson Matthey with the goal to combine artificial metalloenzymes with biosyngas production for hydroformylation.
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Xinyue Gao, PhD student
After obtaining the Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy (2013-2017) from Sichuan University, China, Xinyue continued studying as a Master student of Medicinal Chemistry (2017-2020) with a strong interest in methodology of organic chemistry. In her 3-year research, there have been several published works, mainly focusing on enamine and iminium catalysis. In September 2021, Xinyue joined the Jarvis group, and she will switch to engineer natural enzymes for non-natural synthesis. In her PhD project, palladium catalysts will be combined with protein scaffolds for the sustainable synthesis of nitrogen heterocycles.
Isabeau Lueddecke, PhD student
Isabeau, graduated in ‘Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology’ from the Jacobs University Bremen, Germany in 2018. Her Bachelor thesis was focused on the synthesis of bisphosphonyl-substituted α-amino acids with incorporated fluorine substituents as new potential bioactive compounds. She then pursued a double degree in ‘Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology’ at the IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems, Austria and ‘Experimental and Medical Biosciences’ at the Linköping University, Sweden. She was a visiting scholar at the University of St. Andrews as she worked on her Master thesis. Her project focused on the further exploration of substrate tolerance of the fluorinase enzyme for enzyme mediated last-step 18F labelling and subsequent use in PET. Currently, she is a holder of the Principal’s Career Development PhD Scholarship from the University of Edinburgh. She joined the Jarvis group in January 2021 and her PhD aims to develop new artificial metalloenzymes for selective fluorination.
Arush Agrawal, PhD student
Arush obtained his BSc (Honours) in Chemistry from the University of Delhi, India in 2016. Following this, he completed his MSc education at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany where his master thesis under Jun. Prof. Matthew Hopkinson focused on merging photocatalysis with organocatalysis. After graduating he moved back to India and worked on a project funded by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, in the group of Prof. A. K Prasad at the University of Delhi. He joined the Jarvis group in 2020 as a PhD candidate with a focus on introducing photoactive metal complexes into protein scaffolds and exploring their photocatalytic abilities.
Evelina Venckute, EastBio PhD student
Evelina grew up in Vilnius, Lithuania. She obtained her BSc Chemistry degree from the University of Aberdeen where she completed her final year project on the chemoenzymatic peptide synthesis. During her undergraduate studies she also had an opportunity to spend a semester abroad studying at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Then she completed an MSc degree in Medicinal and Biological Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh where she then joined the group in 2020. Evelina’s PhD studies are funded by the EASTBIO doctoral training partnership and her research will focus on the design of artificial metalloenzymes.
Dan Edwards, EastBio PhD student
Dan graduated with an MChem from the University of Lincoln, awarded the Bruker and BASF prize for best performance in chemistry. He recently completed an industrial research project establishing protocols for the manufacture and analysis of PEGylated protein therapeutics within regulated clinical studies, at Intertek Pharmaceutical Services Manchester. He joined the School of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh in 2019 in a collaborative research project with Dr Amanda Jarvis and Professor Scott Cockroft, supported by funding from EASTBIO. His PhD project aims to develop catalytically active transmembrane protein nanopores for applications in mechanistic elucidation and biochemical flow systems
Cameron Callow, MChem project student
Cameron is an undergraduate chemistry student at the University of Edinburgh. She is carrying out her MChem project in the Jarvis Group on non-canonical amino acids for click reactions.
Alumni
Previous PhD students
Dr Eva Klemencic, 2019-2023.
Worked on Cu-ArMs, finding new proteins scaffolds and UAA biosynthesis.
Previous Postdocs
Dr Gourab Mukherjee, 2022-2023, now a DST Inspire fellow at CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT)
Dr Graham Day, 2022-2023, now at University of Glasgow
Dr Catherine Spencer, 2021-2022
Dr Hafiz Ali, 2021-2022, now at University of Oxford (Schofield and Duarte Groups)
Dr Richard Brewster, 2018-2021, now at AstraZeneca
Undergraduate students
Katie Brown, MChem student, 2022 - 2023
Anette Hansen, BSc student, 2021- 2022
Botond Gemesi, MChem student, 2021-2022
Yueming Jiang, PGT Student, 2021
Zhuoqi 'Jessie' Wang, PGT Student, 2021
Irati Colmenero, MChem Student, 2020-2021
George Love, BSc Student, 2020-2021
Jingxuan Zhu, PGT Student, 2020
Matthew Vaughan, MChem Student, 2019-2020
Catriona Soden, MChem Student, 2019-2020
Ruburika Nagao, Summer Student, 2019
Ayla de Heney, MChem Student, 2018-2019
Alexander Daniels, Visiting student from Haverford College, 2018
Marie Jadoul, Erasmus student from Ensicaen, 2018 (Currently a PhD student at CEA, France)
Paul Rooney, MChem Student, 2017-2018
Yanik Becker, Erasmus Student from the University of Kaiserslautern, 2017 (PhD with Professor Thiel, University of Kaiserslautern)
