CCDC's PhD Partners
We sponsor PhD students and co-supervise them along with leading scientists from academic and commercial institutions around the world. Here we share some of the PhD partners we are currently working with.
PhD Supervisors
Andreas Bender, University of Cambridge
Andreas Bender is a Director for Digitial Life Sciences at Nuvisan in Berlin, as well as a Reader for Molecular Informatics with the Centre for Molecular Science Informatics at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and worked in the Lead Discovery Informatics group at Novartis in Cambridge/MA as well as at Leiden University in the Netherlands as well as AstraZeneca before his current post.
Bao Nguyen, University of Leeds
Bao Nguyen is a Associate Professor in Physical Organic Chemistry, he actively collaborates with colleagues from both the School of Chemistry and School of Chemical and Process Engineering to address current challenges in process chemistry. Dr Nguyen did his PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Dr John M. Brown FRS.
Vitaliy Kurlin, University of Liverpool
Vitaliy Kurlin is a mathematician by training and has completed his PhD in Geometry and Topology at Moscow State University in 2003. Since 2016 he is working as a Data Scientist in the Materials Innovation Factory and as an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Charlotte Willians, University of Leeds
Charlotte Willans is an Associate Professor and Director of Research and Innovation at the University of Leeds. She did her Masters Degree in Chemistry with a Year in Industry at the University of York and her Ph.D. at the University of York working on lanthanide complexes for catalysis and organophosphorus cages. She was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with Prof. Jonathan Steed Durham and their projects included metal organic frameworks and anion binding and N-heterocyclic carbenes.
Richard I. Cooper, University of Oxford
Richard Cooper is an associate professor of Chemistry and Head of Chemical Crystallography in Oxford Chemistry. He is President of the British Crystallographic Association and Scientific Director of the UK Intensive Teaching School in X-ray Structure Analysis. Richard completed a DPhil in Crystallographic Computing in 2000 in the research group of David Watkin, followed by research posts in academia and industry before returning to Oxford Chemistry in 2010.
Peyman Z. Moghadam, University of Sheffield
Peyman Moghadam joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield in November 2018. Prior to joining Sheffield, he was the Head of the computational group at the Adsorption and Advanced Materials Lab at the University of Cambridge for three years. From 2013-2015, Peyman did a postdoc with Professor Randall Snurr at Northwestern University after completing his PhD at the University of Edinburgh.
Aurora Cruz-Cabeza
Aurora Cruz-Cabeza is a Lecturer at the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences, the University of Manchester. During her Masters Degree, she spent some months at the Royal Institution in London and then she moved to Cambridge where she gained a PhD in Physical Chemistry. Following her PhD, she worked as a researcher in several pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer and Roche), the University of Amsterdam and the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre.
Brian Marsden, University of Oxford
Brian is responsible for driving research informatics and research computing capabilities at the Kennedy Institute and the Centre for Medicines Discovery. He worked as part of the Computational Chemistry group at BioFocus PLC before settling down at the SGC in Oxford and now the Centre for Medicines Discovery where he continues to be responsible for all aspects of Informatics, IT and structural bioinformatics.
Iain Oswald, University of Strathclyde
Iain D.H. Oswald graduated from the University of Edinburgh and remained there in the group of Professor Simon Parsons to study hydrogen-bonding patterns and co-crystallisation as part of his PhD. In 2009, Iain started his post at SIPBS as a Lecturer in Pharmaceutics and is interested and has been awarded funding in the areas of co-crystallisation of pharmaceutical materials at high pressure and polymorphism and polymerisation of monomeric materials. Iain has been an integral part of the redevelopment of the MPharm curriculum.
Blair Johnston, University of Strathclyde
Dr Blair Johnston is a Reader in Computational Modelling at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. He teaches on the Masters of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Analysis, Clinical Pharmacy and Chemistry with Drug Discovery degrees. He teaches on the Masters of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Analysis, Clinical Pharmacy and Chemistry with Drug Discovery degrees.
David Fairen-Jimenez, University of Cambridge
Dr David Fairen-Jimenez graduated with a PhD in porous materials in chemistry, under the supervision of Prof Carlos Moreno-Castilla, from the University of Granada in 2006. He is a Royal Society University Research Fellow (URF) and Reader in Molecular Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge, where he leads the Adsorption & Advanced Material Laboratory (AAML).