Postdoc Alumni
12 former postdocs, 30 or so former research students, over 20 research visitors/Summer interns, 15 M.Sc. and over 100 undergraduate researchers have worked in the group.​
Postdoctoral Alumni
Dr Aisling Ni CHeallaigh
Biocatalysis.
Aisling joined us in 2014 after completing a PhD in Stefan Oscarson's oligosaccharide labs at UCD. She worked on a BBSRC program involving various biocatalysis and enzymology projects in collabortion with he Scrutton and Leys labs. Ais moved to a PDRA in Keele/UCD before moving back to the MIB in Manchester
Dr Gavin Miller
Postdoc August 2009-Sept 2013 in the area of biooactive oligosaccharide synthesis, including syntheses up to 12-mer trisulfated heparin and developing end-modified chemistry suitable to apply to oligosaccharides, then applied to 12-mers for in vivo work. Gavin moved to a Teaching Fellowship in the School of Chemistry and has now moved to a lectureship at Keele.
Dr Issa Issa
Issa rejoined us after his PhD working on methodology related to carbohydrates.
Issa now has a job in industry.
Dr Garrett Potter
Garrett is a graduate of University of California, San Diego and worked at Axikin Pharmaceuticals before coming to Manchester for his PhD, and then taking up a post-PhD position to work on mixed sequence therapeutically-relevant heparin fragments in a BBSRC-supported project with an industrial collaborator. He then moved to a PDRA position at Stanford University and is now training in Patent law in California.
Kokovi Lawson Daku
Koko was in our group from July 2014. Koko completed her Licence de Chimie, Maîtrise de Chemie and DEA at the University of Grenoble, France, before completing a PhD at the University of Bath. She then worked at Evotec, Avecia and SAFC. She worked in our lab on synthesis of glycosylaminoglycan fragments, work which is being taken on by others in the Manchester lab. She then took up an offer of a job in an industrial research lab in the north of England.
Dr David Mansell
PDRA from Feb 2010-Dec 2013. David previously worked on a bio-reductively triggerable fluorescent inositol probes. In our group, he worked on biocatalysis in collaboration with Nigel Scrutton’s group on the new biocatalysts encompassing reductases and a most lately on synthetic biology towards the enzymatic production of high value terpenoids. David was snapped up by a start-up synthetic biologics company and is now working in patent law.
Dr Anna Fryzskowska
Postdoc 2006-2010. Working on biocatalysis development in collaborations with Prof Nigel Scrutton (FLS) and Gill Stephens (CEAS - since moved to Nottingham).
Current position: Research at Chirotech
Dr Marek Barath
Postdoc Oct 2006-Feb 2009. Working on oligosaccharide synthesis. Marek developed original elongation synthesis to longer heparin-like oligosaccharides and was involved in the development of new iduronate chemistry.
Current position: Academic in Department of Glycochemistry at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava where he has helped develop a now well-renowned biannual carbohydrate conference series.
Dr Bader Salameh
Postdoc 2004-6. Working on oligosaccharide synthesis.
Current position: Bader has taken up an academic appointment in his home country, Jordan.
Dr Susan McGinty
Postdoc 2004-5, Working on L-iduronic acid synthetic methodology.
Current position: Research Fellow, JJR Pharmaceutical Research Lab, Univ. of Wollongong, Australia
Dr S U Hansen
Postdoc 2003-2013. Worked on methods for synthesis of oligosaccharides, and developed scalable synthesis of L-iduronic acid, leading to scale-up of oligosaccharide synthesis.
Dr Paul Mather
Postdoc 1998-2001. Working on discovery of new anaerobic biocatalysis substrates.After leaving our group Paul worked in a start-up synthetic chemistry company, and is now Business Development Manager in the UK for AMRI.
Dr Hong Li
Hong worked on a joint project with Gill Stephens, following on from some of Paul Mather’s work. After leaving Manchester Hong took up another postdoc position at the University of Oxford. Hong now has a position at University of Lancaster
Dr Anne Routledge
Antisense oligonucleotide - carbohydrate conjugates as anti-HIV agents, and multivalent mannosides. Anne is now an academic at the University of York
Dr Martin Penny
Postdoc 1995-1996. Working on asymmetric synthesis of monosaccharides and 2H-labelling.
After leaving our group Martin worked for the BBSRC in Brussels and now heads the UKRO Office in Brussels.
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Grad Student Alumni [PAGE being updated]
Michael Hales
Michael joined us from Nottingham and completed an MPhil on synthesis related to teichoic acid precursors. He has now gained a Scholarship to undertake a PhD in carbohydrate synthetic vaccine research in Australia though he will retain his links with Manchester as he will be co-supervised by me
Dr Robin Jeanneret
Robin joined us from Cambridge (2014) and is on an EPSRC-funded project developing structural mimetics as tools to probe protein-GAGs structural biology, exploiting our work in new reagents for iduronate syntheses. Robin is now a postdoc in Carmen Galan's lab in Bristol.
Saravanan Kandasamy
Saravanan undertook work on mass-tagging antibiotics and some evaluation of GAG monomer derivatization chemistry
David Cummings
David undertook research directed at new GAG fragments for spectroscopic studies
Dr Olivia Holmes
Olivia
Olivia graduated from Durham (2017) and is working on a BBSRC-funded project developing GAG fragments suitable for conjugates for biomimics, in collaboration with materials and biology groups.
Dr Fahad Alharthi
Fahd joined us in 2017 after graduating from Taif University and Masters study in the USA. His PhD focussed on components of glycosylaminoglycans.He is now working for SWCC in Saudi Arabia
Dr Haijin Li
Haijian completed his PhD in synthesis carbohydrate chemistry related to chondroitin fragments and GlcA chemistry in 2021 and has a postdoc back in China.
Jin-An Shu
Jin-An joined us as a 2019 Graduate from Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan to working on GAG synthetic precursors for her PhD project. During COVID she left MIB and submitted an excellent MPhil.
Dr Charlotte Dalton
Charlotte graduated from Manchester Chemistry with a First Class M.Chem in 2012.She joined the group funded through the BBSRC DTP scheme working on new labelled GAG synthesis and applications in a joint project with Dr S Magennis (Glasgow)
Charlotte has now moved into a successful career in the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr Issa Issa
New synthetic substrates for terpenoid biocatalysis. His work included developing routes to various novel monoterpenoids and identified some new aspects of non-natie substrate selectivities which have helped both provide synthetic utility but also add to insightds regarding the enzyme structure/catalysis.
Dr Ray Prajnamitra
Sept 2011
Ray also joined in Sept 2011. Ray is a Master’s graduate from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia (2011), and was awarded his PhD for on polyaryl arhcitectures in 2016.
Dr Jinesh Mistry
Jinesh graduated from the University of Manchester in 2010. His research project involved methods for construction of novel polyaryl functional dendrimers. Jinesh got his Phd in 2016 and now works for IBM.
Dr Garrett Potter
Garrett graduated from University of California, San Diego and worked at Axikin Pharmaceuticals before coming to Manchester. He was awarded his PhD on synthetic GlcA heparin fragments in 2016.
Dr Jafar Alkabli
Jan 2012: Jafar worked on new polyaryl derivatives and dendritic materials and biaryl nanographenes and compeletd his PhD in 2016
Dr Laura Baltierra Jasso
Laura working in collaboration with the Magennis group and her PhD developing new methods related to glycosylamino glycan (GAG) binding proteins was her awarded in 2016.
Dr Moayyad Khasoqui
April 2012: Polyaryls. Structural studies of new polyaryls, in collaboration with Dr R Pritchard.
Dr Khalid Althumayri
Jan 2012: New synthesis of polyaryls, dimers and new polymeric systems and investigation of new polymer membranes,and graphene aditives with Prof P Budd
Dr Irfan Aliby
October 2013: Irfan is working in collaboration with computational medicinal chemists on modelling of heparin-related oliogsaccharide protein interactions
Mostafa Mahmoud abd El-Satar
Sept 2011: Mostafa joined the group in September 2011 and worked on developing synthesis of new heterocyclic nucleic acid binding agents. He has now been awarded his MPhil and has taken up a PhD position in the School of Chemistry at Bristol Univeristy.

Dr Faisal Jamshaid
MPhil 2012: Faisal has been working on methods for the synthesis of novel multivalent saccharides, and has developed synthesis of new mannosides. He passed his MPhil in 2012, and then completed a synthetic chemistry PhD in Huddersfiield.
Dr Adil Gobouri
PhD, 2011: Adil is working on synthesis of new stereoisomeric dendrimers for his PhD. He completed his B.Sc. at Umm Al-Qura University, and gained his Masters in Organic Chemistry from King Abdul Aziz University in 2005. He spent 18 months as Assistant Lecturer in the Chemistry Department at Taif Teachers College, before coming to Manchester in 2007. Adil has returned to an academic position.
Dr Karl Broberg
Karl started his PhD in September 2007, working on synthesis of bioactive oligosaccharides. Karl graduated from the University of Manchester School of Chemistry and then spent a year doing research at the Wolfson Imaging Centre in Manchester before re-joining the School to undertake his PhD. After that he first needed completed a 6 month round the world trek before taking up a job at AZ.
Dr Aqeel Khan
PhD, 2012: Aqeels’project involves synthesis and evaluation of novel oligoheterocycles for DNA binding,
Aqeel obtained an M.Sc. in heterocyclic chemistry from Punjab University in 2002 and was then employed at the PSCIR labs in Lahore before coming to Manchester in 2005.
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Dr Shatha Al-Aqeel
​PhD, 2010: Shatha’s project involved synthesis and evaluation of novel oligoheterocycles for DNA binding, work which has identified several new types of DNA binding ligand, She synthesized a wide range of novel systems and identified several new DNA binding ligand types. Before coming to Manchester in 2006 Shatha completed her Masters in heterocyclic synthesis and then undertook lecturing at the King Saud University, Riyadh. Following her PhD graduation from Manchester, she has returned to an academic position at King Saud University
Dr Kanan El-Wahedy
Oligobenzmidazoles
Prof Ramy Morjan
Dendrimers
Dr Steve Super Barasa
Asymmetric synthesis by biocatalysis
Dr Mariem Alnaed
Asymmetric kinetic resolutions
Dr Phil Crewe
Asymmetric synthesis with terpenoid ligands
Dr Andrew Goss
Combinatorial solid supported heterocycles
Dr Phil Giles
Pumiliotoxin synthesis
Dr Colin Loyns
Anti-HIV heterocycles
Dr Will Stimpson
Labelled carbohydrates
Richard MiIls
Total synthesis of mycalamides
Dr Marck Norret
Asymmetric synthesis
Dr Jameel Chughtai
Asymmetric synthesis
Dr Will Stimpson
Labelled carbohydrates
Richard MiIls
Total synthesis of mycalamides
Dr Marck Norret
Asymmetric synthesis
Dr Jameel Chughtai
Asymmetric synthesis
MSc and MPhil Alumni
Michael Hales 2019
Taejung Park 2018
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2017
Nurul Razak 2016
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Haiwei Ma 2015
Li 2014
Xiao Xiao 2013
Saira Bano 2011
Shabbir Kapasi 2010
Shazia Horara 2005
Will Cheung 2005
Mike Darley 2004
Ashutosh Tripathi 2004
Malcolm Cooper 1998
Stephane Ott 1997