Group

Group Leader

Professor Matthew Fuchter

Brief Biography:
Matthew Fuchter is a Professor of Chemistry and co-Director of the Centre for Drug Discovery Science in the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London. He is also a Founder, NED and Head of Chemistry for NK:IO Ltd. Beyond this, he is a Theme Champion and Management Board member of the Centre for Processable Electronics, an Editorial Board member for the journal Chirality and an Advisory Board member for RSC Medicinal Chemistry (formally MedChemComm). He was formally a member of the Organic Division Council (now Organic Chemistry Community Council) of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the UK representative to the EuCheMS Division of Organic Chemistry. He is involved in multiple multidisciplinary centres of excellence at Imperial including the Institute of Chemical Biology, the Imperial College Network of Excellence in Malaria, the Antimicrobial Research Collaborative, the Centre for Processable Electronics, Centre for Quantum Engineering Science and Technology, and the London Centre for Nanotechnology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (since 2015) and the European Academy of Sciences(since 2023).

He completed PhD research under the supervision of Professor A. G. M. Barrett, FRS FMedSci and postdoctoral studies at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia, where he worked with Professor A. B. Holmes, AC FRS FAA FInstP. Prior to his position at Imperial College he was the RCUK Academic Fellow at the School of Pharmacy (University of London). He returned to Imperial College in July 2008 as a Lecturer and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in July 2012, Reader in September 2015 and Professor in September 2018.

Professor Fuchter has been awarded a number of prizes in recognition of his work. These include the RSC Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (2014), 2nd prize for a Young Medicinal Chemist in Academia (2015), conferred by the European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC), a 2017 Imperial College President’s Excellence in Research Award and a President’s Medal (together with Professors Tony Barrett, Charles Coombes and Simak Ali) for Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the 2018 Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award for Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry, a Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom (2020), conferred by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences, the RSC Corday-Morgan Prize (2021), a RSC 2022 Materials Chemistry Division Horizon Prize: Stephanie L Kwolek Award, and the 2023 RSC BMCS Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize.

The group

PhD students

• Lisa Dollhopf (PhD) – Photopharmacology
• Kim Tran (PhD) – Photopharmacology
• Juan Manuel Moreno Naranjo (PhD) – Chiral organic electronic materials
• Hamish Trowell (PhD) – Novel polymer systems for data storage
• David Sharp (PhD) – Photoswitches applied to glyco chem bio
• Thitiya 'Joy' Lasing (PhD) – Structure-based inhibitor design
• Louis Minion (PhD) – Novel imaging of chiral materials
• Hussain Al Tuwailib (PhD) - Polymeric conjugated materials
• Ethan Powell (PhD) – Chiral materials for spin applications
• Kai Zheng (PhD) – Discovery methods for photopharmacology
• Sadiya Quazi (PhD) – Dual agents with molecular glues for cancer therapy
• Dominika Daremiak (PhD) – Medicinal chemistry of sugar transferase enzymes
• Zak Elliott (PhD) – Photopharmacology
• Sofia Philipps (PhD) – Photopharmacology
• Sinead McCann (PhD) – Photoswitchable peptides
• Qianyi Zhang (PhD) – Chiral materials
• Aristo Kong (PhD) – Medicinal chemistry
• Marta Di Girolamo (PhD) – Chiral materials spectroscopy
• Aiden McGuirk (MRes/PhD) – Photoswitchable porous materials

Postdoctoral co-workers

• Xingyuan Shi – Chiral organic electronic materials
• Matthew Ward (PhD) – Chiral materials for device applications
• David Reger – Chiral organic electronic materials
• Davia Prischich – Photopharmacology
• Francesco Furlan (PhD) – Chiral materials for device applications
• Thomas Jackson (PhD) – Photoswitchable peptides

Undergraduate students

• Ifaz Syed-Hussain (MSci) – Photopharmacology
• Holly Gill (MSci) – Photoswitchable materials
• Rui Tao (MSci) – Photopharmacology
• Xinran Li (MSci) – Photopharmacology

MRes students

• Kathryn Koh – Photopharmacology
• Sean Gurung – Photoswitch discovery

Other co-workers affiliated with the group

• Priyankush Choudhury (RA), Peck lab, Barts Cancer Institute
• Richard Barlett (PhD), Aragon lab, LMS
• Krzysztof Oliwa (PhD), Greenaway lab, Imperial Chemistry