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.
Dr Abi Reese, Postdoc
Isabeau Lueddecke, Postdoc
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, which she successfully defended in March 2025. She is now conducting a short postdoc within the group.
Liepa Petrutyte, PhD student
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Mingyu Liu, EastBio PhD student
Originally from China, Mingyu received his BSc in Applied Chemistry at Aston University, where he did his final year project on gel electrolyte materials. he then went on to study MSc in Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, where he researched synthetic replicators. He joined the group in 2023 with funding from the Eastbio DTP. He is working on myoglobin-based artificial metalloenzyme for clean growth.
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Richon Blake RFI PhD student
Joint with Professor Ben Davis
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Marta Chronowska , EastBio PhD student
Marta obtained her integrated Master’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. Her final year project completed at the Nagoya University in Japan explored use of lasers to control chemical reactions. She is now continuing her studies in Edinburgh by pursuing a PhD in collaboration between the Jarvis Group and the Wells Wood lab, thanks to the EASTBIO DTP funding. Her research will span chemistry, biology and computer science to develop data-driven methods for de novo design of flavoprotein-based light-activated novel enzymes.
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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.
Guoxiang Li, PGT project student
Guoxiang is an graduate chemistry student at the University of Edinburgh. He is working on the synthesis of new unnatural amino acids for genetic code expansion.
Alumni
Previous PhD students
Dr Isabeau Luddecke, 2021-2025
Dr Evelina Venckute, 2020-2024
Worked on repurposed and artificial myoglobin based enzymes.
Dr Arush Agrawal, 2020-2024
Worked on artificial photoenzymes.
Dr Dan Edwards, 2019 - 2024
Joint student with Prof. Scott Cockcroft working with nanopores.
Dr Eva Klemencic, 2019-2023.
Worked on Cu-ArMs, finding new proteins scaffolds and UAA biosynthesis.
Previous Postdocs
Dr Evelina Venckute, 2024-2025
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
Cameron Callow, MChem student, 2023-2024
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)
