dr Katherine England

Katherine completed an M.Chem. degree at the University of Oxford, working under the supervision of Prof. Jeremy Robertson for her final year research project. In 2002, she joined the Medicinal Chemistry department at Pfizer in Sandwich, UK, where she worked in drug discovery across a variety of disease areas and drug classes. Katherine joined the Structural Genomics Consortium at the University of Oxford in 2011, where she designed and synthesized inhibitors of epigenetic proteins and was awarded a D.Phil. in Organic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Christopher Schofield and Prof. Paul Brennan.

In 2015, she joined the newly formed Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute, where she is part of a multi-disciplinary research team working on target identification and drug discovery for dementia.

dr Tryfon Zarganis-Tzitzikas

Assistant Wine Steward

Tryfon obtained his B.Sc. in Chemistry from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 2010 and his M.Sc., summa cum laude, in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 2012, under the guidance of Prof. J. Stephanidou – Stephanatou at the same University. In 2017 he obtained his Ph.D., cum laude, in Medicinal Chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Alexander Dömling in the Group of Drug Design at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. His thesis focused on Innovative Multicomponent Reactions and their Use in Medicinal Chemistry.

After obtaining his Ph.D., Tryfon joined Syncom B.V. as a medicinal chemist working on an immuno-oncology project in close collaboration with the University of Groningen. Since 2014, he has been a co-founder and CSO of TelesisPharma B.V. in Groningen, a company focusing on exploring novel synthetic routes to APIs using multicomponent reactions. In Dec 2018, he joined Prof. Paul Brennan’s group at the Oxford Drug Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford, UK, as a postdoctoral scientist focusing on Dementia, on a project funded by Alzheimer’s Research, UK.

Dr laura ortega varga

Laura completed her Pharmacy studies at the University of Salamanca (Spain) and received a scholarship to be trained at Lilly Alcobendas R&D’s Medicinal Chemistry Department.

She obtained her MSc in Drug Discovery and Development from Complutense University, UAH and CEU Madrid and joined the Computational Chemical Biology Group (CIB-CSIC, Madrid) as a Postgraduate Researcher.

She was awarded a Marie Skłodowska -Curie fellowship for early stage researchers to carry out her PhD within the AEGIS ITN in the Structural Bioinformatics Unit at the Institut Pasteur in Paris with secondments at the ETH Zurich and AstraZeneca Gothenburg site.   

After obtaining her PhD from Sorbonne University, she continued her career at Institut Pasteur’s Structural Bioinformatics Unit before joining Paul Brennan's group and the Alzheimer's Research UK ODDI in 2021 as a computational chemist.

Dr gonzalo vera namuncura

Group Publicity Lead

Gonzalo completed his PhD in medicinal chemistry at the Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile (under the supervisión of Prof. Gonzalo Recabarren) in 2019. Late that year, he joined the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche sur le Médicament de Normandie (CERMN) as a postdoctoral fellow, were he worked in the development of a new radiotracers regarding Alzheimer’s disease under the supervisión of the Prof. Valerie Collot . In 2020 he joined the group of Dr Fatima El Garah at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Toulouse, France, were he worked on the synthesis of novel compounds for the development of new antiobiotic therapies.
In 2022, he joined the Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute, where he is part of a multi-disciplinary research team working on target identification and drug discovery for dementia.

DR SHEENAGH AIKEN

Sheenagh studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, undertaking a summer studentship in medicinal chemistry at the Institute of Cancer Research. This was followed by an MSc in Chemical Research at Queen’s University Belfast (working on the synthesis of cationic lipids as gene delivery vectors supervised by Dr William P. D. Goldring) and work at Redx Pharma, synthesising small molecules for oncology and immuno-oncology targets.

Sheenagh’s doctoral research on the application of lithiation–borylation methodology to the total synthesis of complex polyketide natural products was supervised by Professor Varinder K. Aggarwal at the University of Bristol. She then stayed in Bristol as a postdoc in the Aggarwal group and then working with Professor Tim Gallagher, before moving to Oxford in May 2023. Sheenagh is co-supervised by Professor Yang Shi at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, designing and synthesising novel chemical probes for newly discovered RNA m6A enzymes with potential applications in cancer.

Adam Smith

Adam graduated from the University of Birmingham having studied for his MSci Chemistry, with his final year project under the supervision of Professor Jon Preece exploring the synthesis of liquid crystalline, fluorescent molecules for potential use as a photovoltaic material.
After graduating, Adam joined Evotec as a discovery chemist. Over two years he synthesised target compounds for a variety of projects spanning multiple classes of disease.
Adam joined the Brennan Group in February 2022 as a research assistant in the Alzheimer's Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute.

Outside of chemistry Adam enjoys running, recently completing the 2022 Oxford half Marathon.

ethan chidlow

Ethan completed his bachelor’s degree in Medicinal Chemistry and Human Biology at Keele University with his final-year project focusing on a molecular docking approach and series of small molecules syntheses to identify potential inhibitors of L. donovanii galactokinase. He then went on to complete a Masters by Research also at Keele University where he focused on the synthesis of nucleoside analogues with covalent warheads for the inhibition of GMD from P. aeruginosa.

Outside of the lab, he enjoys archery, cycling, and whisky tasting.

Yining Yang

Yining completed her MChem degree at University of Oxford in 2017. During her final year project, she spent four months working at F. Hoffmann-La Roche, co-supervised by Professor Luca Gobbi from Roche and Professor Veronique Gouverneur from Oxford, on new C-H activation methodologies of four-membered rings as synthetic tools for novel drug-like molecules. 

She then joined the EPSRC Synthesis for Biology and Medicine (SBM) CDT in 2017 and is currently doing her DPhil project with Professor Paul Brennan. Her current project is to develop proteomics platforms as screening tools for fragment-based ligand discovery. In her leisure time, she enjoys badminton, climbing and singing.

Thomas Grimes

Tom graduated from Durham University in 2017 with an MChem degree in Chemistry. He spent the final year of his degree within the epigenetics department at GSK in Stevenage working on the "Synthesis and bioactivity of BET bromodomain inhibitors." Following his degree, Tom worked for two years as a Research Scientist for AMRI based at the Eli Lilly Erl Wood site. He provided synthetic organic chemistry support for a wide variety of Eli Lilly and Elanco projects.

Tom joined the Brennan Group in July 2019 to work as part of the Alzheimer's Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute.

Elisabeth Rothweiler

Mira completed her degree in Pharmacy at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität München in 2018 and obtained her German Pharmacy license in 2019.  She undertook an internship in the Huber group at the University of Oxford where she synthesised bifunctional degraders and subsequently tested them in cellular assays. In October 2019 Mira started her research project as an NDM studentship DPhil candidate. Currently, she is investigating new approaches for targeted protein degradation and ligand-based screening under co-supervision of Dr Kilian Huber and Prof Paul Brennan.

Mia Callens

Mia graduated from the University of Leeds having completed her MChem in Medicinal Chemistry. During this time, she spent a year working within Process Chemistry at GSK, Stevenage, investigating alternative synthetic routes to drug intermediates. She then completed her final MChem project under the supervision of Professor Adam Nelson, working on the discovery of novel kinase inhibitors using an activity-directed synthesis approach.

Mia joined the ESPRC Synthesis for Biology and Medicine CDT in 2019, and her DPhil explores chemical probe development for GTPase/GEF complexes. In her own time, Mia likes to play music, and skydives (when the weather is good) after qualifying with her solo-license in 2019.

Amber truepenny

Amber received her MNatSc (Industrial) in Natural Sciences from the University of Leeds, majoring in Chemistry with Biochemistry. She spent her Industrial Placement year at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Oxfordshire as part of the Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK) team and undertook a summer internship at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam as part of the Emerging Infections (EI) group under Dr Le Van Tan. Her Master’s project centred on the design and synthesis of novel inhibitors of an aminopeptidase for the treatment of malaria, co-supervised by Dr Richard Foster and Professor Elwyn Isaac.

She joined the Wellcome Trust Chemistry in Cells DPhil programme in 2020 and is currently undertaking a DPhil project under the co-supervision of Professors Paul Brennan and Benedikt Kessler, developing DUBTACs to increase protein levels.

Matthew holland

Group Wine Steward

Matthew read Natural Sciences at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, specialising in chemistry. He did his fourth year project in the group of the late Professor Chris Abell FRS using fragment-based approaches to target MurB from P. aeruginosa. Matthew is part of the SABS R3 Doctoral Training Programme, and his DPhil project looks at using software tools to discover new bioisosteric replacements of key pharmaceutical heterocycles. Matthew is co-supervised by Dr Fernanda Duarte in the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory.

Outside of the lab, he enjoys choral singing as part of the Merton College Choir, national and international rowing, wine tasting, and watching opera and ballet.

Hadeel Abozenadah

Originally from Saudi Arabia, Hadeel took her bachelor’s degree in Medicinal chemistry and pharmacology at Western Oregon University, USA and her master’s degree in Drug Chemistry at Newcastle University.

Hadeel is currently studying for her DPhil in Clinical Medicine. Her work is focusing on developing a new inhibitor for Nuropillin-1, a cell-surface co-receptor for several different growths factors that can be used for the treatment of Alzheimer disease.

Benedict wiltshire

Beno is a fourth year Chemistry student at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. He joins the group to carry out his Part II research project looking at developing chemical probes of the RhoA/ARHGEF2 complex.

Outside of the lab, he enjoys playing hockey for the University, going on hikes and cooking with and for his friends.

naomi costello

Naomi is currently reading Chemistry at University College, Oxford. She has undertaken internships both at the Institute of Cancer Research, supervised by Professor Richard Houlston, working on generating the 3D genomic structure of renal cell carcinoma, and at the University of Oxford, supervised by Professor Angela Russell, synthesising PROTACs as therapies for T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Her final year project involves using a fragment-based drug discovery approach to identify small molecule inhibitors of a chromatin-associated protein implicated in melanoma, as well as utilising X-ray crystallography to elucidate its structure.

In her spare time, Naomi enjoys horse riding and playing netball for her college team.

william griffith