Biography

• Senior Lecturer in Biotechnology, The University of Portsmouth (from Sept 2021)

• Hon. Associate Professor, The University of Warwick (from Sept 2021)

• WISB Research Career Development Fellow, The University of Warwick (2017-2021)

• EMBO Fellowship 2017, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany.

• Research Fellow (2010 - 2017), Chemical biology, The University of Manchester.

• PhD in Molecular Enzymology (2006 - 2009), The University of Manchester.

Research interests

My research group's main aim is to identify and exploit potential untapped and alternative sources of biocatalysts. We are particularly interested in the development of new synthetic/biosynthetic routes and plausible chemo-enzymatic approaches that can directly incorporate different biocatalysts. The versatility of these methods when combined with existing biosynthetic pathways will open up new modes of synthesizing building blocks and derivatives of many existing drug targets and APIs that are currently marketed.

We have a long-standing interest in utilizing halogenases enzymes to synthesise non-naturals and to generate artificial enzymatic systems. These are versatile catalysts to synthesise many value-added chemicals and biomolecules with unique chemical or biophysical properties. Our approaches combine different aspects and research tools available from the fields of Synthetic Biology, Synthetic Chemistry, Enzymology, Structural Biology, Chemical Biology, Medicinal Chemistry and Metallo-catalysis. We apply various techniques including directed evolution, mechanistic and structural characterization, other biophysical techniques, combinatorial/retrospective engineering, microbial and pathway chassis engineering, machine learning and organic synthesis.

Please check our group website for more details 

We are actively looking for MRes and PhD students. Details of the currently advertised projects are below.

Project 1 : Challenging LEGO plastics: Designing novel enzymes for biodegradation (full funded for UK/EU and international students)

Project 2: Development of novel halogenase enzymes for biopharmaceutical applications  (self funded/students with scholarships)