The Livingston Group is a large and diverse group composed of Ph.D. students and Postdoctoral Researchers from a broad range of countries. We offer an interdisciplinary environment where it is possible for researchers to learn about areas outside of their immediate interests and to apply these concepts to their own research.
Our main research interests include the development of novel separation technologies for manufacturing chemicals, (bio)pharmaceuticals, and precision polymers with exact sequence / molar mass (oligonucleotides, peptides, PEG). Many of the concepts we work with are based on membrane separations, which is the core expertise of the Livingston Group.
We are always interested in hearing from ambitious and highly motivated researchers with a keen interest and experience in membrane formation, fundamentals of membrane transport and solvent/membrane/solute interactions, applications for specific organic transformations, organic /polymer chemistry and chemical synthesis of bioactive molecules.
Professor Andrew Livingston
Andrew Livingston (AGL) is from Taranaki NZ, and studied Chemical Engineering at University of Canterbury. He then worked at an NZ food processing company followed by a PhD at Cambridge UK, and in 1990 joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College, serving as HoD 2008-2016. He leads a research group of 20 PhD students and Post-Docs, with interests in membranes for molecular separations in liquids and the development of chemical processes using these membranes. Awards include the Junior Moulton Medal, Cremer and Warner Medal, and Underwood Medal of IChemE, and Silver Medal of Royal Academy of Engineering. AGL was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2006.
From October 2016 he has been the inaugural Director of the Barrer Centre at Imperial College, and from 1 July 2017 has been the interim academic lead, from 1 Jan 2019- May 2019 the interim director, of the new Rosalind Franklin Institute, set up with a £100M investment from the UK Government to carry out ground-breaking research at the interface of engineering, physical sciences and life sciences. In 1 November 2019 he joined Queen Mary University of London as the Vice Principal, Research and Innovation.
In 1996, AGL founded Membrane Extraction Technology, a spin-out company which evolved to manufacture solvent stable Organic Solvent Nanofiltration (OSN) membranes for molecular separations in organic liquids. On 1 March 2010 MET was acquired by Evonik Industries of Essen, Germany, and continues in business as Evonik MET Ltd., a part of the Evonik Fibres and Membranes Business. In 2018 with Piers Gaffney AGL founded Exactmer, a new start-up dedicated to the production of exact polymer molecules including oligonucleotides, peptides and synthetic polymers such as PEG, using Nanostar Sieving technology.
Read more about Professor Livingston research interests on his Personal Web Page.
Current group members
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Dr. Piers Gaffney
Location
ACEX 128
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Dr. Ludmila Peeva
Location
Roderic Hill C406
Ludmila joined the Group in 1999 and has been involved in more than 20 projects related to separation processes in pharmaceutical/biopharmaceutical manufacture, specifically membrane processes, nanofiltration in organic solvents
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Dr. Ruijiao Dong
Location
ACEX 117
Ruijiao joined the Livingston Group since June 2015 from Shanghai Jiao Tong University of China, to work on precision fabrication of synthetic polymers
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Dr. Zhiwei Jiang
Location
ACEX 116
Zhiwei joined the Livingston Group in Oct 2012 as a PhD student, and stated working as a research associate from Feb 2017. His research interest is fabrication of thin films and composite membranes for liquid separations
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Dr. Danilo Cuccato
Location
ACEX 128
Danilo joined the Livingston Group in April, 2017 from ETH Switzerland to work on iterative synthesis of polymers
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PhD. Jihoon Kim
Location
ACEX 117
Jihoon joined the Livingston Group in May 2018 to work on developing membranes and systems for biofuel production, hydrocarbon separation, and iterative synthesis of polymers
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Dr. Anna Li Volsi
Location
ACEX 123
Anna is a PhD polymer chemist (Palermo) with background in controlled and living polymerisation and bioconjugation methods. She carried out post-doctoral work at UCL and Imperial College. She joined the Livingston group in October 2018 to work on the synthesis of unimolecular PEGs and oligonucleotides
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Naveed Zaidi
Location
ACEX first floor
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Dr. Yang Yang
Location
ACEX 116
Yang joined the Livingston Group in October 2019, as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellow. She received her Ph.D. at the research group "Physics of Supramolecular Systems and Surfaces" in Germany
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Dr. Marcus Cook
Location
ACEX 124
Marcus re-joined the Livingston group in July 2020 after completing his PhD in the group in 2018. He held positions of research engineer at Concrete Canvas, and more recently development chemist at GEO Specialty chemicals before returning
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Dr. Natalia Kleczewska
Location
ACEX 117
Natalia holds a doctoral degree from Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan in Poland. Since then, she worked as a PDRA in the Jemielity Group at University of Warsaw. After a short internship at Queen's University Belfast, she joined the Livingston Group in July 2020 to work on iterative synthesis of oligonucleotides
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Dr. Ângelo Monteiro
Location
ACEX first floor
Ângelo, which completed his PhD in March 2020 at Queen Mary Uiversity of London, has joined the Livingston Group in July 2020. He is now currently working on iterative synthesis of polymers
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Mr. Jet Yeo
Location
ACEX 124
Jet joined the Livingston Group in May 2017 after completing his bachelor's degree in New Zealand, and himself is orginally from Malaysia. His PhD work focuses on iterative synthesis of polymers, specialising in peptides
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Jack Cordrey
Location
ACEX 118
Jack joined the Livingston Group in September 2017 having completed is MEng in Chemical Engineering from Imperial. Jack currently works on the iterative synthesis platform for oligonucleotides
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Siyao Li
Location
ACEX 116
Siyao got her master degree from Imperial College London and started her PhD in October, 2018
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Mr. Adam Oxley
Location
ACEX 118
Adam started his PhD in the Livingston group in October 2018. He works on membrane design, synthesis and scale up, along with their application in iterative synthesis
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Maria Burggraef, M. Sc.
Location
ACEX 118
Maria joined the group in December 2018 after finishing her M. Sc. in Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University. She is now doing her PhD on the synthesis and functionalisation of unimolecular Polyethylene glycols for pharmaceutical applications
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Dezhi Liu
Location
ACEX 425
Mr. Dezhi Liu joined Prof. Livingston’s group in Jan 2019 from University of Rochester as co-supervised PhD student. His research theme is developing thin-film composite membranes for pharmaceutical separation