Group Members

Matt grew up in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire and studied chemistry at the University of Oxford. Having completed a Masters project under the supervision of Prof. Véronique Gouverneur, he stayed in the group for a PhD, graduating in 2011. During this time, he worked on the development of new reaction methods for organic synthesis, focusing on gold-catalysed coupling reactions and radiofluorination chemistry for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging. His PhD work was funded through a CASE award from GlaxoSmithKline and he spent time at their Clinical Imaging Centre (CIC) radiochemistry facility at Hammersmith Hospital in London. In 2012, Matt moved to Germany as a Postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Frank Glorius at the WWU Münster. His research there was funded by scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation and focused on transition metal- and photocatalysis, specialising in methodology development using visible light as an energy source. In 2016, Matt started his independent career as a Junior Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin, setting up a research programme centred on the fields of organofluorine chemistry, organocatalysis and photochemistry. In November 2021, Matt moved back to the UK to take up the position of Senior Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at Newcastle University.