University of Sheffield, Department of Chemistry PhD Projects, Programmes & Scholarships

New Anticancer Therapeutics Based on Luminescent Transition Metal Complexes

Supervisor: Prof JA Thomas

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death around the world. Over 50% of cancer tumours are treated with platinum-based metal complexes, like cisplatin and its derivatives. Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance with Transition Metal Complexes

Supervisor: Prof JA Thomas

Antimicrobial resistance is a rapidly emerging global emergency. Many pathogens are becoming untreatable with standard antibiotics. Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Novel materials and processes for the abatement and degradation of organic pollutants in water

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

The provision of clean water is a global issue with societal, health, and economic implications. An important challenge is the removal of aromatic solvents and chlorinated compounds, which are very frequent pollutants in both industrial and rural areas, and which are highly toxic. Read more

Supervisor: Dr M Conte

Development and synthesis of zeolites for the conversion of sugars to biofuels and environmental applications

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

A promising strategy to replace non-renewable fuel sources, as raw material for energy applications, is to convert renewable biomass into transportation fuels and value-added chemicals. Read more

Supervisor: Dr M Conte

Synthesis and design of heterogeneous catalysts for the petrochemical industry

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

The development of novel catalysts for selective oxidation reactions is an area of decisive importance for both industry and academia. Read more

Supervisor: Dr M Conte

Dendrimers for Drug delivery

We have worked with a number of water soluble polymer systems capable of encapsulating and solubilising various hydrophobic drug moieties. Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Magnetic Nano-particles for the separation and purification of proteins

When proteins are synthesised (using a natural or cell-based method), they are contaminated with hundreds of other proteins, nucleic acids and numerous other small molecules. Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Synthesis of Artificial blood

Inspired by Nature, we have developed a number of porphyrin containing biomimetic macromolecules. These have included a porphyrin cored polymer capable of reversibly binding oxygen. Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

New macro-ligands for protein binding, and drug delivery.

Proteins bind and recognise each other using large surface areas. This recognition process is vital for a variety of biological applications. Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Computational modelling of mineral-organic binding in soil

Supervisor: Dr N Martsinovich

Soils contain large amounts of organic matter (also called “soil organic carbon”). there is three times as much carbon stored in soil than in the atmosphere as CO. Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Computational modelling of two-dimensional graphene-based materials

Supervisor: Dr N Martsinovich

Graphene is a novel material with outstanding electronic and mechanical properties. Chemical modification of graphene gives rise to new materials, such as graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide, with properties very distinct from graphene and with possible applications in photocatalysis and batteries. Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Development of new Gaussian basis sets for the lanthanides

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Molecules containing lanthanide elements are currently of strong interest due to their use in fields such as catalysis, magnets, imaging, battery technologies and ultra-cold chemistry. Read more

Supervisor: Dr JG Hill

Synthesis of Peptidomimetics Based on Functionalizable Freidinger Lactams

Supervisor: Prof JPA Harrity

Despite mediating a plethora of vital biological processes in living organisms, peptides remain a challenging class of drug targets due to their poor cell penetration, proteolytic instability and unfavourable pharmacokinetics. Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Synthesis of Heteroaromatic Boronic Esters via Annulation Reactions of Ynone Trifluoroborate Salts

Supervisor: Prof JPA Harrity

We have recently shown that ynones armed with the synthetically versatile trifluoroborate functional group can be elaborated to a range of useful heteroaromatic building blocks (Ref 1) and that these offer useful platforms for drug discovery (Ref 2). Read more

Year round applications PhD Research Project Self-Funded PhD Students Only