Group Members
Prof Anna Slater
PI, Royal Society University Fellow, Professor of Chemistry
Anna graduated from the University of Nottingham with a PhD in Supramolecular Chemistry (2011). After PDRA positions in porphyrins and molecular materials Anna was appointed as a Royal Society-EPSRC Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow in 2016 and a RS URF in 2021. She was promoted to a Personal Chair in Oct 22. Her research interests span flow chemistry, materials science, supramolecular self-assembly, and enabling technology for process control.
Dr Firdaus Parveen
Research Coordinator & Flow Centre Manager
Dr Firdaus Parveen received her Master's degree in Chemistry (2011) and Doctorate in Chemical Engineering (2017) from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. She was awarded a prestigious Shastri Indo Canadian research award in 2017 to work at USASK, Canada. She has also worked as an Assistant Professor at University of Delhi, India from 2017-18. She joined Imperial College of London as Research Associate in 2019 and worked with Prof Mimi Hii (ICL), Prof Klaus (ICL) and Prof J. Blacker (Leeds). She has gained advanced experience of continuous flow chemistry, building flow set ups, robotic reactions, liquid and gas phase reactions, heterogenous catalysis, catalysts development and their characterization, high and low pressure reactions. She believes in work life balance and would like to visit new places and explore nature.
Amine Melanie
Research Project Manager
Amine has taken up a position between the Cooper and Slater groups to manage the UKAEA funded project on the synthesis of porous substrates for challenging separations.
Amine graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Microbiology from the University of Leeds in 2003. After initially working in the pharmaceutical industry, Amine joined Liverpool John Moores University to deliver a Knowledge Transfer Partnership in Microbiology and Water and Environmental Engineering between the university and a company based in Preston. Amine then moved on to Lancaster University and the University of Central Lancashire where he was managing various types of knowledge exchange programmes, mainly focusing on research and student employability.
Dr Alex Padgham
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Alex completed his MChem with a Year in Industry (GSK) at the University of Sussex (2011) and graduated from Imperial College London with a PhD in Organic Chemistry (2018). His first PDRA position was in the group of Dr Marcus Baumann at University College Dublin, working in collaboration with Pfizer Ireland to explore the use of flow chemistry in API synthesis. Currently he is working as a PDRA in the Slater group, further expanding on the use of new and continuous technologies in chemistry.
Dr Abbie Scholes
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Abbie completed her MChem at the University of Liverpool, where her final year project focussed on the synthesis of functionalised piperazines as β-turn mimetics. Her PhD (2023), funded by the Royal Society and co-supervised by Dr Becky Greenaway and Prof Slater, focussed on the synthesis of functionalised imine macrocycles and exploring how enabling technologies can be used to refine and control complicated dynamic mixtures. Now, Abbie has taken up a position joint between the Slater and Cooper Groups on the synthesis of porous substrates for challenging separations.
Dr Prachi Gupta
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Prachi completed her master's in Chemistry from Delhi, India, in 2015. Soon after she joined PhD program at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER)-Pune, India where she worked on synthesis and redox study of antiaromatic macrocycles under the guidance of Prof. V.G. Anand and received her degree in 2022. During her final year of PhD. she worked as an exchange student in Prof. Miquel A. Pericàs’s research group at Catalan Institute of Chemical Research (ICIQ)-Tarragona, Spain. Afterwards she worked as a postdoctoral researcher for five months at ESPCI, Paris. Currently she is working on cage chemistry in Slater group. In her spare time, she loves to experiment with her cooking or travel places.
Dr Jasmine Catlow
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Jaz completed her MChem at the University of Sheffield (2020), with a final year project focussing on reaction development and optimisation for Chan Lam etherification. She remained at the University of Sheffield for her PhD under the supervision of Dr Ben Partridge and Dr Grant Hill. Her PhD project focused on the reactions, synthesis and computational studies of synthetic building blocks, for which she organised a placement at AstraZeneca. Jaz has now taken up a position in the Slater Group, working on a joint project with Dr Adam Clayton, Prof Richard Bourne, and Prof Alexei Lapkin. This project will focus on autonomous optimisation in continuous flow for pharmaceutical development, with Jaz taking her first steps into learning flow chemistry! In her spare time, Jaz loves to read, crochet, swim, and explore local cafes.
PhD & Masters
Aran Smith
PhD Student
Aran earned his BSc (Hons) in Chemistry from Liverpool John Moores University in 2022, completing a research project on metalloporphyrin metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for optical oxygen sensing; his supervisor, Dr. Francesca Giuntini, was awarded a Marie Curie grant with this work. In 2023, Aran completed his MSc at the University of Liverpool, his research project focusing on lanthanide-oxalate frameworks as potential lithium-ion sorbents for groundwater brines, under the Rosseinsky group.
In January 2024, Aran began his PhD with the Slater group, co-supervised by Prof. Liang Zhang of East China Normal University and Dr. John Ward. Aran’s research focuses on investigating metal coordination in supramolecular systems and using reactor design with Design of Experiments approaches to translate and optimise these processes to flow.
Harvey West
PhD Student
Harvey graduated in 2023 from the University of Liverpool with an MCHEM, receiving the LCC distinction award for his final year project presentation. Much of his research to date has centred around flow chemistry, with a total of two summer studentships and both his third- and fourth-year projects working in this exciting area of cutting-edge chemistry. He recently developed a strong interest in deploying enabling technologies and machine learning in the lab, and aims to apply these to synthesising novel macrocyclic targets and delivering more sustainable chemical processes.
Harvey’s PhD commenced in Oct 2023 within the Slater group and will be co-supervised by Prof Andy Cooper (Liverpool) and Prof Richard Bourne (Leeds). He has two main goals, the development of novel techniques for self-optimised flow chemistry, and testing and cataloguing the properties and potential applications of supramolecular systems.
Matt Tomkinson
PhD Student
Matthew completed his MChem in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Liverpool in 2024, where he earned the LCC Distinction Award for his final year research project. His research during his third and fourth years, as well as his summer studentship, focused on developing compounds to address diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and lymphatic filariasis. Matthew began his PhD in October 2024 with the Slater Group, under the co-supervision of Prof. Anna Slater and Dr. Christophe Aissa. His research aims to investigate non-thermal plasma as a chemical reagent, with a focus on elucidating its mechanisms and exploring its application in pharmaceutically relevant electroconductive reactions.
George Lyall-Brooks
PhD Student
George graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2022 with an undergraduate degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, completing placements at Recipharm and AstraZeneca. He then moved to Durham University to complete his master’s degree under the supervision of Prof. Ian Baxendale, working on the use of flow chemistry to synthesise functionalised nitrobenzene derivatives. George then moved to Sterling Pharma Solutions to work as a Flow Chemistry Development Chemist. His PhD will be focussed on the development of bespoke algorithms for autonomous optimisation in flow, supervised by Prof. Anna Slater and Prof. Prudence Wong.
Alice Oram
PhD Student
Alice graduated from the University of Birmingham with a Master’s degree in Chemistry, during which she completed a year in industry at Evotec, Abingdon, as part of the medicinal chemistry team. She then joined AstraZeneca's two-year R&D programme in Gothenburg, Sweden, where she worked across three teams on high-throughput synthesis of PROTACs, large-scale synthesis, and reaction prediction models. In January 2025, Alice began her PhD at the University of Liverpool, supervised by Dr. John Ward, Prof. Anna Slater, Prof. Richard Bourne, and AstraZeneca. Her research focuses on developing heterogeneous photocatalysis and reactors for production-scale photoredox catalysis.
Laurie Marlow
PhD Student
Laurie graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2024 with an MChem with Research in Industry degree. His placement was at Victrex PLC investigating the recyclability of the high-performance polymer, PEEK. In his master’s project, Laurie became interested in supramolecular chemistry concepts and investigated the dynamic nature of a cyclic imine responsible for mouse taint in natural wines under the supervision of Dr Filip Szczypinski and Prof. Andy Cooper. After graduating, Laurie worked at PQ Silicas UK characterising porous synthetic silicas for a wide variety of applications. In October 2025, Laurie joined the Slater Group, working on Optimizing Flow Pathways for Monodispersed Porous Nanoparticles in collaboration with Baker Hughes. Laurie’s academic interests are in porous materials chemistry and data-driven process optimisation.
Meg O'Neill
PhD Student
Meg graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2024 after studying for a BSc in Chemistry, where she continued her studies and completed an MSc in Digital Chemistry in 2025. Her research mainly focused on providing a database for analytical data, along with its metadata, to be stored and processed in a structured format.In October 2025, Meg started her PhD at the University of Liverpool, supervised by Prof. Anna Slater, Dr Lauren McHugh, and Prof. Karen Robertson. Her research focuses on the co-crystallisation of porous organic cages for functionalised materials in flow chemistry.
Joe Lowson
PhD Student
Joe graduated from the University of York in 2023 with an MChem, which included a placement year researching the synthesis and testing of electrolyte additives for use in Lithium-Ion Batteries at Orbia. He then moved into a full-time research role at Orbia, working on similar projects as well as process scale-up. He is now studying for a PhD, supervised by Professor’s Anna Slater and Andy Cooper, focusing on optimising the syntheses of some of the ligands used in Metal Organic Frameworks.
Dongyang Zheng
PhD Student
Dongyang completed his MSc degree at the University of Liverpool in 2024. Prior to his postgraduate studies, he worked as a chromatography engineer at ThermoFisher and Danaher in China. Earlier in his career, he conducted membrane separation research at GIAT, CAS.
In December 2025, Dongyang joined Slater’s group and started his PhD study. His research focuses on Intelligent optimization of inline purification – delivering automated product profiling for pharma.