Matthew obtained his MCHEM degree from the University of Liverpool in 2013. He went on to do a PhD at Liverpool under the direction of Professor Dave Adams and Dr Jon Iggo, developing novel Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) techniques to study self-assembled peptide gel materials. He won the 2017 Ronald Belcher Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry for his PhD research. He also won a Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to work with Professor Yaroslav Khimyak at the School of Pharmacy at UEA. His work focuses on the combination of localised NMR measurements (also known as chemical shift imaging CSI) with the deliberate introduction of controlled concentration gradients into samples and materials. These methods offer very significant savings in the time and amount of sample requried to analyse how a system responds to changes in the environmental conditions (pH, salt, ligand concentration).

In August 2020, Matthew was awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to develop the CSI/gradient tools for a wide range of purposes across materials science, chemical biology and drug discovery. For example, the fast measurement of the dissociation constants (pKa values) of organic molecules in water and organic media (doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.8b00181, doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.2c00200).

We are also investigating the association of cations with anionic polymers and nanomaterials (doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.2c01166), methods to determine the properties of surfactants, and methods to probe the interactions of small molecules with proteins.

I am always happy to discuss potential projects for Masters or PhD study.

PhD students

Haider Hussain - October 2021 - haider.hussain@uea.ac.uk

PDRAs

Dr Todor Koev - September 2021 - t.koev@uea.ac.uk

Dr Serena Monaco - December 2021 - s.monaco@uea.ac.uk