Group Members

Dr Damien Dattler is from Strasbourg and is helping us to develop novel and functional peptidic foldamers. His undergraduate, masters and doctoral programmes were all from the University of Strasbourg (with a short stint at Basel), where he worked on supramolecular systems.

Ryan Stendall joined the group from the University of Bath. Ryan is working on foldamer design, but has also responded to a call to arms by synthesising potential anti-SARS-CoV-2 compounds.

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. 

Qi Lin is from Wuhan, China and is working on the design of novel foldamers based on the homologated amino acids pioneered in our group. She has discovered a new helix type and developed a catalyst system around it.

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.

Fiona completed her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at the University of York, during which time she undertook a Year in Industry at the Francis Crick Institute, working with the Peptide Chemistry STP and Structural Biology STP. She is a first year LIDo PhD student starting her first rotation working on the development of bifunctional fluorophores in collaboration with Dr Thomas Kampourakis at the Randall.

Sofia Schoenbauer is an MSci student who is working on the synthesis of tripeptide mimics as asymmetric organocatalysts.

Taura Brown is an MRes student working on the development of synthetic beta-turns.

Wenjun joined us from Shanghai Biohope Technology where she was a research assistant in the field of synthetic chemistry and applied chemistry. She is an MRes student working on the synthesis of novel foldamers for catalysis