Group Members

Dr Zongyao Zhang joined us from the group of Professor Paul Beer at Oxford to work on the development of new foldamer scaffolds.

Callum Johnston studied Chemistry at the University of Southampton and the University of Surrey. He then spent time in industry both with Evotec and Infineum before studying for an MRes designing anticancer compounds with Professor Ed Tate. In collaboration with Professor Riki Eggert and GW, Callum is designing proteomics probes for CBD. 

Ines studied her MSc at King’s and joined the Cobb Group for her masters project in atropisomerism. She loved the group so much she decided to re-join for her PhD in SARS-CoV-2 inhibitor design. She also did research at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre with Barbacid’s group and managed the set up a sunscreen production unit for people with albinism in Mozambique! She is also developing novel foldamer architectures for other applications.

Lan joined us from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology where she was a research assistant in the field of Polymer Chemistry and Nanomedicine. Her work is a collaboration between our lab and Prof Eggert's group in the department, and she is making compounds that will aid us in our understanding of the mechanism of psychosine.

Valerie studied her undergraduate degree here at King's and in a joint project with Dr Maria Sanz is synthesising terpene derivatives to examine their behaviour within the Earth's atmosphere.

Lewis joined us from the other Cobb group in Durham where he was working on utilizing fluorine to dictate the amide equilibrium in peptoids. He is working jointly within our group and Dr Manuel Mueller's group on novel post translational modifications of proteins.

Junyan studied Applied Chemistry at Beijing University of Chemical Technology. He then undertook MSc studies in Analytical Toxicology at King’s College London before joining the Cobb group to work on the synthesis of novel catalytic foldamers..

Si Zhe is a Singaporean 1st year PhD student. He completed his undergraduate MSci Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry at Imperial College London, working with Prof James Bull on sulfoxamine anion reactivities. Si Zhe is currently based in both Cobb and Musgrave groups for his PhD and is investigating metal-binding foldamers.

An-Jie graduated from the University of St Andrews in 2023 where her final year  project focused on the total synthesis of a plant-derived natural product with Prof Aitken. She then moved on to Imperial for her MRes in Drug Discovery and Development, where her project in the Di Antonio group revolved around the chemical functionalisation of CRISPR-Cas9 technology with G-quadruplex ligands. Her PhD with Profs Cobb and Eggert focuses on developing bifunctionalised lipid probes.

Farheen is an MSci student currently researching the enantioselectivity of compounds derived from an organocatalytic domino reaction.

Ekaterina is an MSci student working on an organocatalytic ring expansion.