People

Prof. Stefan Guldin

Stefan is Head of the Adaptive and Responsive Nanomaterials Group and Deputy Head (Enterprise) in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

He studied Physics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2003-05) and the Technical University of Munich (2005-08) and graduated with a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2012 (Advisor: Prof Ulli Steiner; thesis title: Inorganic nanoarchitectures by organic self-assembly). Subsequently, Dr Guldin carried out postdoctoral research as a scholar of the German Academy of Sciences at EPFL (Advisor: Prof Francesco Stellacci) before joining UCL in 2015. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018 and Full Professor in 2022. 

For his work, Stefan has received awards by the Institute of Physics, German Academy of Sciences, the German National Academic Foundation, Springer Publishing and the European Materials Research Society. He is co-founder of the biomed start-up Vesynta, which is devoted to the development of companion drug monitoring solutions for personalised medicine. The group's educational platform qTLC.app, which enables to conduct analytical chemistry with a smartphone, is used across 47 countries on 6 continents and received the UCL Education Award 2020.

• Stefan Guldin CV (pdf)

Group members

Aishath Nisha Naeem

Doctoral Researcher

Nisha started her PhD in October 2021 after receiving the EPSRC DTP studentship award via the Open Doctoral Studentships competition (primary supervisor: Sara Ghoreishizadeh). Her research focuses on the development of monolithic integrated electrochemical sensing systems for diagnostic and monitoring applications.

Nisha obtained her MEng in bioengineering from Imperial College London in 2016, where her final year project involved the development of a microfluidic platform for the detection of bile acid. She completed her undergraduate research placement with the Biosensors Group of Imperial College London, where she worked on developing needle-based glutamate sensors. After her undergraduate degree, she worked as a biomedical engineer in Maldives at Medtech Maldives Pvt Ltd, where she got technical training on a variety of medical equipment from medical technology giants such as Abbott diagnostics, B.Braun, and Medtronic.

Esther Osarfo-Mensah

Doctoral Researcher

Esther joined AdReNa in September 2020 and is part of the Advanced Characterisation of Materials CDT. Her project involves characterising competitive interactions and binding selectivity at bio-nano interfaces.

She obtained her MChem Chemistry with Study Year Abroad from the University of Bath, where her final year project focused on the investigation of Janus gold nanoparticle structures at the DPPC phospholipid monolayer. Her Erasmus year was spent at The University of Bordeaux studying the properties of ionic particles using molecular spectroscopic techniques. After graduating, Esther spent 6 years working in science communication and education outreach at the Science Museum London and then the Francis Crick Institute.

Jialin Gu

Doctoral Researcher

Jialin initially joined AdReNa lab for his MSc research project on "3D nanostructures based on block copolymer iterative self-assembly for surface-enhanced Raman scattering". In July 2022, he started doctoral research in the area of mesoporous architectures for electrochemical energy storage. 

Jialin graduated in 2021 from UCL with an MSc in Chemical Process Engineering.

Klara Burdova

Undergraduate Researcher

Klara is a 4th year MEng student at UCL Chemical Engineering and joined our group for her final year research project on the characterisation of microporous thin-film coatings via ellipsometric porosimetry together with her project partner Natan Abelian.

Ke Meng

Doctoral Researcher

Ke joined AdReNa in 2019, as a cohort member of the Doctoral Training Centre in Advanced Materials Characterisation. His research aims to develop novel block copolymer membranes for purifying complex macromolecules, such as viral vectors used in gene therapy.

His background is in the area of biochemical engineering, with a BEng (1st Class Hons) from UCL and an MSc (Distinction) from Imperial College. He worked as a process engineer in Henlius Biotech, and has participated in the launch of the first Chinese biosimilar, HLX01.

Kelvin Wong

Doctoral Researcher

Kelvin joined AdReNa in September 2022 as a PhD student working on a project titled "Biomimetic Colloid Science". His research aims to elucidate complex colloidal phenomena found in nature by using functionalized gold nanoparticles as a model system.

Kelvin graduated with a B.Eng (Chemical Engineering) from the National University of Singapore in 2021. After graduating, he joined the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology as a Research Engineer and worked on developing a low-energy, bottom-up method of synthesizing nanoparticulate amorphous solid dispersions.

Máté Füredi

Doctoral Researcher

Máté joined the group as part of a collaborative project between AdReNa and the optical metrology manufacturer Semilab. His research aims to increase the performance of electrochemical energy storage devices by the incorporation of mesoporous thin films, and to characterise the mesoporous structures with techniques such as ellipsometric porosimetry.

He holds a BSc and MSc in Chemical Engineering from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Natan Abelian

Undergraduate Researcher

Natan, a 4th year MEng student in Chemical Engineering at UCL, has become part of our team for her concluding year research project. The focus of his project is on the analysis of microporous thin-film coatings through ellipsometric porosimetry, a project he is undertaking alongside his project partner, Klara Burdova.

Ruiyan Gao 

Doctoral Researcher

Ruiyan became a member of the group in October 2023, joining as a PhD student under the primary supervision of Dr. Diego Lopez Barreiro. His research focuses on improving the performance and sustainability of biosensing platforms by using recombinant structural proteins.

Ruiyan completed his MEng degree in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London in 2022, followed by an MSc degree in Biochemical Engineering at University College London in 2023.

Ruslan Shayakhynuly 

Doctoral Researcher

Ruslan holds a BSc from MSc from Satbayev University and a MSc Chemical Process Engineering from UCL. For his MSc project, he worked with us for his final year project on "Nanoparticle-based molecular recognition in aqueous solutions". After a few years at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, Ruslan rejoined the AdReNa group for doctoral research in the area of biosensing in mesoporous architectures. 

Sasha Green

Undergraduate Researcher

Sasha is a 4th year MEng student at UCL Chemical Engineering and joined our group for her final year research project on the assembly and transfer of gold nanoparticles with variable contact angle via the Langmuir Blodgett technique together with her project partner Javier Cortina Ortiz. 

Sasha, a 4th-year MEng student in Chemical Engineering at UCL, has become a part of our group for her final year research project. This work focuses on the assembly and transfer of gold nanoparticles with variable contact angles via the Langmuir Blodgett technique, which she conducts alongside her project partner, Javier Cortina Ortiz.

Yueyang Gao

Doctoral Researcher

Yueyang joined the AdReNa group in September 2022. He started his PhD after receiving the studentship of UCL Dean’s Prize in the Faculty of Engineering Science and UCL-CSC joint scholarship. 

Yueyang has a cross-discipline background in chemical engineering and programming for electronic devices (Arduino, Python, et.al), with a BEng and MRes in Chemical Engineering from Beinjing University and Tianjin University, respectively.

Associate Group Members

Lisa Pfaffenrath

Visiting Researcher

Lisa joined AdReNa part-time between 2021 and 2023 to support the stakeholder engagement with parents, children and the general public within the NIHR funded ChromaDose project in the role of Inclusion and Engagement Lead:  Public and Patient Involvement. More about her work can also be found on the ChromaDose website (link). 

She is originally trained as a mainstream primary school teacher and worked for over 10 years in mainstream and special needs settings within state and independent schools in the UK, Switzerland and Germany. In recent years, Lisa completed a Master of Arts in Special and Inclusive Education at the UCL Institute of Education, where she graduated with distinction. Her studies were particularly devoted to action research, which provides study participants with an active role in research projects. The outcome of one project titled “Creating a culture of dialogue and transparency with parents and teachers in a primary school in Germany” was recently published as a book chapter. Another project on “The impact of policies and practices on parents` attitudes towards inclusive education” is currently in preparation for publication as a scientific article.

Amy Monahan

Doctoral Researcher

Amy joined the group in 2021 as part of a collaborative project between AdReNa and the Stevens group in Imperial College. She is a member of the Advanced Characterisation of Materials CDT, and her project is about understanding and characterising the bio-nano interface of hybrid semiconducting nanoparticles for diagnostics and imaging.

Amy graduated with a B.A in Nanoscience from Trinity College Dublin in May 2021, where she worked on organic electronics for virus detection. She also completed a Laidlaw funded research project on surface-functionalised micro-cantilevers for biodetection.

Sam Ackerley

Doctoral Researcher

Sam studied an integrated Masters course in Chemistry at UCL and graduated in June 2019 with a first-class degree (MSci). In October 2019 he joined the EPSRC funded Transformative Pharmaceutical Technologies Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) programme based at UCL School of Pharmacy. He is associated to AdReNa through a joint PhD project with the group of Dr Gemma-Louise Davies (Department of Chemistry), his primary supervisor. As part of his first year, Sam has completed a training project based in Chemical Engineering working on nanoparticles for cancer therapy and also an industry placement at GlaxoSmithKline. Sam is now investigating MRI active functionalised nanocomposites for targeted drug delivery, a project affiliated with AstraZeneca.

Alumni

Rahul Kandpal (2022/23)

Visiting Doctoral Researcher

Rahul joined AdReNa in October 2023 to pursue his Doctoral research as a Commonwealth Split-site Scholar under the mentorship of Prof. Stefan Guldin. His work was focused on finding the insights to answer the research question “Can surface chemistry of electrodes by the addition of inorganic nanomaterials and functional groups affect the enrichment of different exoelectrogens in a microbial fuel cell”.

He will be obtaining his PhD degree from the School of Interdisciplinary Research (SIRe) at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi under the joint supervision of Prof. Z.A. Shaikh (Department of Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology) and Prof. S. Wazed Ali (Department of Textile and Fiber Engineering). His doctoral work focused on the development of flexible electrode for microbial fuel cell to treat textile effluent. Rahul completed his B.Tech in Biochemical Engineering at Uttarakhand Technical University (Department of Biochemical Engineering) and his M.Tech in Biomedical Engineering at the Delhi Technological University (Department of Biotechnology).

Dr Jugal Suthar (2016-2023)

Doctoral Researcher (2016-20) and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Invention for Innovation (2021-23)

Jugal worked in our group in multiple roles. Initially as part of the CDT in Nano-medicine and Targeted Therapeutics, he completed a PhD on "Novel Biosensing Approaches for Detection of Exosomal Proteins" in a collaboration between the AdReNa group and Prof Gareth Williams (UCL School of Pharmacy). Later, he took up a role as postdoctoral research fellow and project manager of the NIHR i4i project ChromaDose. Jugal is co-founder of Vesynta and now works full-time as their CEO. 

Jugal is a registered and pharmacist (MPharm, UCL - 1st class hons), with considerable industrial experience, having conducted placements for GSK and Pfizer in the UK, and Piramal Enterprises in India.

Maximiliano Jara Fornerod (2017-2023)

Doctoral Researcher (2017-2023), Postdoctoral Researcher (2023)

Max initially joined us during his MSc studies on projects titled "Liquid crystal microfluidics" and "Gold nanoparticle assembly for stretchable plasmonic mats". After returning to Chile as a Senior Reliability Engineer at Empresa Nacional del Petroleo ENAP in Chile, he came back for a PhD on a project titled "Mesoporous nanoarchitectures for electrochemical biosensors". In 2023, Max joined the group of Prof Nicolas Voelcker at Monash University (Australia). Meanwhile, he received a SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research at MIT (USA) in the group of Ariel Fust. 

Max holds an Engineer’s Degree with maximum distinction in Materials Engineering and a diploma in Process Engineering from the University of Concepcion, Chile as well as an MSc in Materials Science & Engineering from EPFL, Switzerland. 

Dr Alberto Alvarez Fernandez (2018-2023)

Research Fellow (2018-2021), Senior Research Fellow (2022), Visiting Researcher (2022/23)

Alberto joined AdReNa in November 2018 as a postdoctoral researcher on the EPSRC project block copolymer-enabled mesopore sensing. He was promoted to Senior Research Fellow in January 2022. In November 2022, Aberto left the group for an ADMIRE MSCA Fellowship to conduct research at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) but remained associated as a visiting researcher. Meanwhile, he is a Gipuzkoa Fellow at the Materials Physics Center in San Sebastian (Spain). 

Alberto obtained his PhD in the University of Bordeaux as part of a LabEx AMADEus collaborative project between the LCPO (Guillaume Fleury) and the CRPP (Virginie Ponsinet) that focused on the development of plasmonic nanostructured surfaces using block copolymers. 

Alaric Taylor (core 2016-2020, affiliate 2021-2023)

Visiting Researcher

Alaric joined AdReNa in 2016 to pursue independent postdoctoral work as an EPSRC Research Fellow under the mentorship of both Stefan and Prof. Ivan P. Parkin (Chemistry Department). His work was initially focused on the nanolithographic fabrication of functional materials, principally through the exploitation of colloidal monolayer self-assembly at the air-water interface. Later, Alaric became part of the EU H2020 DIACHEMO project, where he conducted various prototyping activities for a point-of-care microfluidic device for therapeutic drug monitoring. He is now Chief Technology Officer of the UCL start-up Vesynta. 

He obtained his PhD within the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London under the auspices of the Photonic Systems Centre for Doctoral Training. His doctoral work focused on the development of nanostructured temperature-responsive glazing. Alaric completed his BSc at Imperial College London (Department of Physics, Quantum Optics and Laser Science group) and his MRes at the University of Cambridge (Engineering Department, Electronic Materials and Devices group).

Juzheng Zhang (2022/23)

Postgraduate researcher

Juzheng joined AdreNa in February 2023 as an MSc researcher on a project titled “Acoustic immuno-sensing using biogenic supported lipid bilayers from extracellular vesicles”. He holds a dual BEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Birmingham and the Beijing University of Chemical Technology and a MSc from UCL in Chemical Process Engineering. 

Guoyu Li (2022/23)

Postgraduate Researcher

Guoyu joined AdReNa lab in 2023 for his MSc research project on engineering gold nanoparticle solubility using automation and machine learning. He holds a BSc degree in Chemistry from King’s College London and a MSc from UCL in Chemical Process Engineering. 

Izzul Yusoff (2022/23)

Undergraduate Researcher

Izzul joined AdReNa in September 2022 to complete his final year research project as part of his MEng degree in Chemical Engineering. His project was titled "Novel BCP-based ultrafiltration membranes for large scale purification of viral vectors" together with Poppy Hobbs. He graduated in 2023. 

Poppy Hobbs (2022/23)

Undergraduate Researcher

Poppy studied Chemical Engineering (MEng) at UCL and graduated in 2023. She joined the AdReNa group for her final year, carrying out her research project on Novel BCP-based ultrafiltration membranes for large scale purification of viral vectors, working alongside Izzul Yusoff. 

Zifan Zhou (2022/23)

Undergraduate Researcher

Zifan joined the AdReNa group in his 4th year of Chemical Engineering (MEng) at UCL and graduated in 2023. He was working on engineering porous architecture for mesoporous silica humidity sensors with Kaicheng as his final year research project.

Kaicheng Huang (2022/23)

Undergraduate Researcher

Kaicheng studied Chemical Engineering (MEng) at UCL and graduated in 2023. He joined the lab group during his final year together with Zifan Zhou, working on a research project focusing on engineering pore and interconnection size for mesoporous silica full-range humidity sensors.

Tobias de Mendonca (2021-2022)

Analytical Scientist

He worked with the AdReNa group on analytical techniques for the quantification of chemotherapeutic drugs in small body fluid samples. Meanwhile, he has transitioned to the AdReNa spin-out Vesynta ltd as an analytical scientist.

Toby graduated from the University of Oxford (2020) with a Master's in Chemistry (MChem). His final year’s project specialised in NMR, creating pulse sequences to obtain NOESY and HOESY spectra of fluorinated small molecules simultaneously using parallel acquisition NMR spectroscopy (PANSY) in order to dramatically reduce machine time.

Yann Mamie (2019-2022)

Research Engineer

Yann was associated in a number of roles with AdReNa, most recently as visiting prototyping engineer employed by the AdReNa spin-out Vesynta ltd. He previously worked for AdReNa on prototyping and validation of an in-vitro diagnostic device for therapeutic drug monitoring.

Yann graduated in 2020 with an MSci in Materials Science and Engineering from EPFL. He conducted his final year research project in our group, where he was studying the arrangement of nanoparticles at the air-water interface of Langmuir-Blodgett troughs with the aim to implement an ellipsometry technique for the characterisation of their contact angle.

Nowadays, Yann works as a Software Development Engineer at Heidelberg Instruments in Switzerland. 

Mehzabin Patel (2016-2022)

Doctoral Researcher

Mehzabin joined us on an EngD research project in 10/2016 as member of the EPSRC Doctoral Training Centre in Molecular Modelling and Materials Science in collaboration with BASF. She was working on soft matter-directed materials assembly and completed her PhD with a thesis titled "Liquid Crystal Microdroplets from Complex Binary Liquid Mixtures". 

She also holds a BSc and MSc in Chemistry from the University of Leicester.

Meanwhile, Mehzabin works as a Quality Assurance Analyst at Vesynta ltd. 

Faizah Ahmed (2021-22)

Undergraduate Researcher

Faizah joined the group to complete her MEng research project together with Isha Manee on improving the mechanical stability and scratch-resistance of mesoporous thin films. Meanwhile, she graduated with a MEng in Chemical Engineering and is pursuing doctoral research in the department.

Isha Manee (2021-22)

Undergraduate Researcher

Ishaa joined the group during her final year at UCL Chemical Engineering for her MEng research project. Together with Faizah Ahmed, she was studying pathways for improved mechanical stability and scratch-resistance of mesoporous thin films.

Cem Yirik (2021-22)

Undergraduate Researcher

Cem joined AdReNa in September 2021 to complete his final year research project as part of his MEng degree in Chemical Engineering. His project was titled "Self-assembled SERS substrates for therapeutic drug monitoring". Previously, he completed an industrial placement in Supply Chain & Engineering working for Unilever.

Clarissa Lorraine Grace Harman (2017-22)

Doctoral Researcher

Clarissa was a PhD student within the CDT in Advanced Therapeutics and Nanomedicines. After a foundation project on layered terbium nanoparticles for drug delivery and an industrial placement at AstraZeneca, she was investigating nanoparticle-based micro-assemblies for encapsulation and precision release of target compounds, as part of an inter-departmental collaboration with the School of Pharmacy and the Department of Chemistry. She completed her doctoral research with a thesis titled "Systematic Design of Magnetophoretic Pickering Emulsions", which was conducted in partnership with the industrial sponsor Quotient Sciences. 

Clarissa obtained her Master of Chemistry from the University of Sheffield (MChem 2.1), investigating the reactivity of rhodium-complexes. Clarissa’s undergraduate studies also involved a year exchange at the University of Adelaide, Australia. 

Meanwhile, Clarissa works as an Associate Clinical Trial Manager at Medpace.

Anandapadmanabhan A. Rajendran (2022)

Visiting Doctoral Researcher

Anand joined the group as part of a collaborative project between AdReNa lab and Prof. Beatriz Prieto-Simón’s group (URV, Spain). His research mainly focuses on developing a nanochannel platform for the detection of biomarkers in healthcare-associated infections. At AdReNa, he aimed to develop a novel self-assembled material architecture for electrochemical biosensing applications.

Previously he has worked on projects such as ''Surface modifications of metal ferrites nanoparticles'' (2016) and "Host-Guest Interaction of Graphene" (2017) with Prof. B.L.V Prasad (Director of the Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences (CeNS), Bangalore, India) and Prof. Kazuyuki Takai (Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan) respectively.

He holds an Integrated MS in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, India (2017).

Asyia Iftikhar (2020-21)

Communications Officer

Asyia joined the team to support our outreach and communications, in particular related to our NIHR funded ChromaDose project. She meanwhile graduated in Classics from UCL and has further pursuing her career in media.

Miao Lyu (2021)

Postgraduate Researcher

Miao joined the AdReNa group in 2021 as an MSc researcher on a project titled "Solution-processed Nanoarchitectures for Virucidal Action". She holds a BEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nottingham China campus. She previously also worked as a researcher in Nottingham on environmentally persistent free radicals in PM2.5.

Dr Niamh Mac Fhionnlaoich (2015-2020)

Doctoral Researcher

Niamh conducted doctoral research on the interplay between nanoparticles and liquid crystals and completed her PhD with a thesis titled "Stimuli-Responsive Liquid Crystal-Nanoparticle Composites". She was also instrumental in the development of many of the AdReNa software tools for materials characterisation, including qTLC.app (analytical chemistry with your smartphone), Nanoparticle Entropy (evaluation of dispersity) and CORDERLY (colloidal order analysis).    

She studied chemical engineering at the University of California in Davis and received her B.Eng (1st class Hons) from the University College Dublin. There she won the Carthy Graduate Research Project Award for her final year research project which was also Highly Commended in the Undergraduate Awards.  

Niamh now works as a research engineer at APC. 

Nadir Al-Maskari (2020)

Postgraduate Researcher

Nadir joined AdreNa in March 2020 as an MSc researcher on block copolymer-enabled humidity sensing. He holds a First Class Honours degree in Chemical Engineering from Swansea University. There he won a scholarship award from the Oman Cultural Attaché to advance his studies at UCL.

Nurazza Aysha Binti Badrol Hisham (2019/20)

Undergraduate researcher

Nurazza joined the research group in his 4th year of Chemical Engineering at UCL. Together with her research partner, Izzat, she studied acoustic immunosensing of supported lipid bilayers formed from extracellular vesicles.

Muhammad Abdul (Izzat) Majid (2019/20)

Undergraduate researcher

Izzat joined the research group in his 4th year of Chemical Engineering at UCL. Together with his research partner, Nurazza, he studied acoustic immunosensing of supported lipid bilayers formed from extracellular vesicles.

Celina Basa (2019/20)

Undergraduate researcher

Celina joined the group for her final year research project as part of an MEng degree in Chemical Engineering. Together with Eva Unyat, she worked on the automation-based quantification and differentiation of chemotherapeutic drugs.

Eva Unyat (2019/20)

Undergraduate researcher 

Eva joined the group during her final year at UCL Chemical Engineering for her MEng research project. Together with Celina Basa, she studied the potential of automated selective degradation in differentiating and quantifying chemotherapeutic drug molecules for therapeutic drug monitoring.

Dr Ye Yang (2015-2020)

Postdoctoral research fellow

Yang's history with AdReNa lab is long and successful. He initially started working with Stefan during postgraduate research at EPFL, mainly focussing around the use of nanoparticle probes as supramolecular receptors for doxorubicin. Yang then joined our lab in 10/2015 on an UCL Graduate/Overseas Research Scholarship to work on ligand-shell mediated nanoparticle-stimuli interactions. After successful defence of his PhD thesis (title: "On the interplay of nanoparticles with small molecules"), he continued as postdoctoral research fellow on a CNIE inspiration grant before accepting a postion as senior scientist at Novozymes, Beijing. 

He holds a B.Eng. from Tsinghua University, an MSc in Materials Science & Engineering from EPFL and a PhD from UCL.

Yang now works as a senior scientist at Novozymes. 

Dr Barry Reid (2015-20)

Doctoral researcher

Barry started his doctoral research in 05/2015 as AdReNa lab PhD student #1 on an EPSRC Case Studentship with BASF. After highly productive doctoral research, he successfully defended his thesis titled "Block copolymer-directed Assembly of mesoporous inorganic architectures". In 2019 took up a research technician role in the department. 

He graduated with a First Class Honours B.Sci. in Analytic Science from Dublin City University and holds a Ph.D. from University College London.

Barry now works as a research technician in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCL.  

Dr Lixu Yang (2018/19)

Postdoctoral research fellow

Lixu joined the group in July 2018 to start independent research on a CNIE inspiration grant. She was working on converting plastic waste into functional materials with a supramolecular approach.

Lixu conducted 3 years postdoc research with Prof. Neil Champness at the University of Nottingham (2013 – 2016). Her research focused on the molecular self-assembly on surfaces and rotaxane synthesis. She obtained her PhD with Dr Scott Cockroft at the University of Edinburgh (2009 - 2013), where she studied the fundamental aspects of non-covalent interactions. Lixu received her BSc in Chemistry from Nankai University (2004 - 2008), where she spent two years working on molecular sensors and switches in Prof. Yu Liu’s group.

Camille Daganaud (2019)

Visiting postgraduate researcher

Camille graduated in Materials Engineering with an MSc from EPFL. She joined the lab for a summer internship; where Camille worked on a project involving microfluidics to produce Pickering emulsions for drug delivery.

Runzhang Qi (2016-19)

Undergraduate Researcher

Runzhang recently graduated in 2019 from UCL Chemical Engineering as the top student of his class. After two summer projects on cellulose nanocrystals and quantified thin layer chromatography in the  AdReNa group, he carried out his final year MEng research project on ‘Selective fluorophore conjugation for thin layer chromatography quantification’ together with Adilah Binti Ashari. Runzhang now conducts a PhD with Tuomas Knowles at the University of Cambridge funded by a Trinity College Scholarship. 

Rafael Pascal Bilger (2019)

Undergraduate Researcher

Rafael was a visiting student from RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He joined the AdReNa group to conduct his final research project for his MSc in Industrial Engineering with a focus on Chemical Engineering. His research work in our group was focused on electrochemical-based mesopore biosensing.

Dr Jakub Trzcinski (2018/19)

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Jakub joined our group in 2018 as a postdoctoral researcher on the EU H2020 DIACHEMO project "Point-of-care microfluidic device for quantification of chemotherapeutic drugs in small body fluid samples by highly selective nanoparticle extraction and liquid crystal detection".

He obtained his PhD in the group of Enrico Dalcanale (Univ Parma). His doctoral research was focused on the design and synthesis of a novel supramolecular receptor for benzene detection in air. Prior to coming to UCL, he worked with  Paolo Scrimin’s group at the Padova University to work on the development of gold and polymeric nanoparticles for nanomedical applications.

Jakub now works as a Research Assistant Professor at Warsaw University of Technology.

Adilah Binti Ashari (2018/19)

Undergraduate Researcher

Adilah joined AReNa in her 4th year at UCL Chemical Engineering to conduct her final year undergraduate research project. Together with her research partner, Runzhang, she was looking into selective fluorophore conjugation for thin layer chromatography quantification as a route to monitor the pharmacokinetics of non-fluorescent therapeutic drug molecules.

Gary Wong (2018/19)

Undergraduate Researcher

Gary studies Chemical Engineering (MEng) in his 4th year at UCL. He joined the lab for his final year research project on microfluidic ligand exchange of gold nanoparticles, which he was conducting together with Yee Ting.

Yee Ting (2018/19)

Undergraduate Researcher

Yee Ting joined the group in her final year of Chemical Engineering (MEng) at UCL. Together with Gary, Yee Ting was working on the microfluidic exchange of gold nanoparticles as her undergraduate research project.

Stefano Peressutti (2018/19)

Undergraduate Researcher

Stefano was a visiting student from the University of Trieste. He joined the group to carry out the final year research project on stretchable plasmonic 2D arrays as part of his degree in Materials and Processes Engineering. 

Aneeq Farooq (2018)

Undergraduate Researcher

Aneeq is a 4th year Pharmacy student at University of Hamburg. 

He joined the AdReNa group in summer of 2018 as a research intern to work on robotic processing of patient samples for automated therapeutic drug monitoring.

Andrew Redfearn (2018)

Research Associate

Andrew completed his PhD in the department of Mechanical Engineering and carried out some much appreciated design work in our group related to our prototype development for therapeutic drug monitoring. 

He now works for Matlab. 

Silvia Boccardo (2018)

Doctoral researcher

Silvia started her PhD in 11/2015 at the University of Trieste on the interaction of nanoparticles at the biointerface. She joined our group for three months in 2018 to combine her computational investigation with our experimental efforts. 

She holds a bachelor’s degree in information engineering at the University of Padua and a master degree in clinical engineering at the University of Trieste.

Ruslan Shayakhynuly (2017/18)

Postgraduate researcher

Ruslan holds a MSci from UCL in Chemical Process Engineering. He worked with us for his final year project on "Nanoparticle-based molecular recognition in aqueous solutions". 

Muhamad Hafiz Ismail (2017/18)

Undergraduate researcher

Hafiz is a 4th year MEng Chemical Engineering student at UCL. He worked with the AdReNa group on "Low temperature removal of organic template from mesoporous inorganic architectures" together with Shatakshi Sharma for his final year undergraduate research project.

Shatakshi Sharma (2017/18)

Undergraduate researcher

Shatakshi joined the group for her final year research project as part of her MEng Chemical Engineering degree. She worked on low temperature removal of organic templates for mesoporous inorganic architectures, a project that was conducted jointly with Mohammad Hafiz.

Jin Hao (2017/18)

Undergraduate researcher

Jin Hao joined the lab group during his final year of MEng Chemical Engineering in UCL. Together with Wei Lik, Jin Hao was working on a research project focusing on drug quantification analysis by thin layer chromatography (TLC) and optical imaging.

Wei Lik (2017/18)

Undergraduate researcher

Wei Lik was a final year MEng Chemical Engineering student at UCL. He carried out his research project working on "Quantification of analytes by Thin-Layer Chromatography and optical imaging" together with Jin Hao.

Dr Luis Antonio Serrano Gonzalez (2015-2017)

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Luis worked in AdReNa as postdoctoral research associate from 08/2015 to 11/2017 on the EU H2020 DIACHEMO project "Point-of-care microfluidic device for quantification of chemotherapeutic drugs in small body fluid samples by highly selective nanoparticle extraction and liquid crystal detection".

He holds a B.Sci. (1st Class Hons) from the University of Extremadura. Recently he received a Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow for his work with Graeme Cooke on synthesis and characterisation of redox active molecules for optoelectronic applications.

Luis now works as a postdoctoral investigator at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.

Dr Stuart Ibsen (2016/17)

Stuart worked with AdReNa from 04/2016-09/2017 on a microfluidic platform for point-of-care diagnostics within the EU H2020 DIACHEMO Project. 

He holds a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of California San Diego working with Sadik Esener as well as a PhD in Zoology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa working with Paul Nachtigall and Whitlow Au. His previous research includes the design of point of care microfluidic/dielectrophoresis devices for detection of disease biomarkers in human blood as well as the design of light activatable drug delivery mechanisms for chemotherapy agents including doxorubicin.

Stuart now works as an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University and Knight Cancer Institute. Portland, USA.

Yini Weng (2017)

Now: 4th year UG Student in Materials Science & Engineering (M.Eng.), Imperial College London, UK.

Yini is studying materials science at Imperial College in her third year. During the summer of 2017 she carried out a research internship in our lab. Her project was focussed on using the quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation to characterise surface adsorption phenomena. 

Ludovic Bescher (2016/17)

Now: Process Engineer at STMicroelectronics, Grenoble, France.

Ludovic was a visiting student coming from EPFL Switzerland to carry out his final year research project for a MSc in Materials Science & Engineering. He spent 6 months in the group on a project titled "Fundamental aspects of microfluidic phase transfer and extraction and thermally controlled generation of liquid crystal microdroplets".

Aina Vidal Lorente (2016/17)

Now: Trainee in Engineering Consultancy, Barcelona, Spain.

Aina graduated with a MEng in Chemical Engineering from UCL. She worked with the AdReNa group on "Gold nanoparticle assembly for stretchable plasmonic mats" together with Anastasia Kislyak for their final year undergraduate research project.

Anastasia Kislyak (2016/17)

Anastasia graduated with a MEng in Chemical Engineering from UCL. After having pursued a summer research project in the AdReNa group on Langmuir Blodget assembly, she was working on "Gold nanoparticle assembly for stretchable plasmonic mats" together with Aina Vidal Lorente for their final year undergraduate research project.

Anmol Jnawali (2016/17)

Anmol graduated from UCL with a MEng in Chemical Engineering. He worked in the group on his final year research project titled “Emulsion templating of inorganic nanoarchitectures through assembly at the air-water interface”, which he carried out jointly with Bilaal Ali Tariq.

Bilaal Ali Tariq (2016/17)

Bilaal received a MEng in Chemical Engineering from UCL. Together with Anmol Jnawali, he conducted his final year research project in the group, titled “Emulsion templating of inorganic nanoarchitectures through assembly at the air-water interface”. 

Chinedu Okeke (2016/17)

Chinedu joined the group for his final year research project as part of a MEng degree in Chemical Engineering. He worked on the characterisation of porous inorganic nanoarchitectures by environmental ellipsometric porosimetry, a project that he carried out jointly with Jack Hughes.

Jack Hughes (2016/17)

Now: UG Student in Medicine (MBBS) at Hull York Medical School

Jack carried out his final year research project in our lab as part of his MEng degree in Chemical Engineering. His work focused on the characterisation of porous inorganic nanoarchitectures by environmental ellipsometric porosimetry, a project that he was carrying out jointly with Chinedu Okeke.

Melvin Ting (2016)

Now: PG student in Advanced Chemical Engineering (M.Phil.) at University of Cambridge

During his undergraduate studies at UCL Chemical Engineering Melvin was awarded by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Scheme (UROS) to conduct research as summer student in our labs on "Gold nanoparticle assembly for stretchable plasmonic mats".

Hanrui Zheng (2015/16)

Now: PG Student at University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

Hanrui worked for his final year MEng project and later as a research assistant in our lab. His work was focused on "Molecular Recognition and Surface Adsorption".

Elwin Hunter-Sellars (2016)

Now: Ph.D. Student at Imperial College London, London, UK.

Elwin spent a summer in our group after being awarded an EPSRC Undergraduate Vacation Bursary to work with Dr. Stuart Ibsen, Dr. Anand Pallipurathand Prof. Asterios Gavrilidis on "Phase Separation and the Physics of Droplet Formation in a Microfluidic System". He graduated from UCL with a MEng in Chemical Engineering with study abroad at Columbia University. 

Swan Choy (2015/16)

Now: R & D Executive at Chemical Company of Malaysia (polymers division).

Swan conducted her final year project in our group and graduated with an MEng in Chemical Engineering for her work on "Mesoporous thin film architectures using block copolymer self-assembly".

Yinong Chen (2015/16)

Now: Administrative Coordinator at University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China.

Yinong carried out a research project in our group titled "Effect of humidity on the performance of anti-reflective coatings" in partial fulfillment of her MSci degree in Chemical Process Engineering. 

Eu Jin Ong (2015/16)

Now: Graduate Process Engineer at Repsol, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

Eu Jin studied Chemical Engineering at UCL and conducted his MEng final year research with the group. His project was titled "Solvent vapour annealing of block copolymer composites". 

Saja Muwaffak (2015)

Now: Ph.D. Student, School of Pharmacy, University College London, London, UK.

Saja is a PhD student at the UCL CDT programme in Advanced Therapeutics and Nanomedicines. She joined the group for a 3 month research project in supramolecular recognition and stimuli-induced interaction between gold nanoparticles and small molecules.

Jehan Moingeon (2014/15)

Jehan worked with us as a semester student at EPFL. His project was titled “Morphology-induced dipole moment in monolayer protected gold nanoparticles”. 

Malavika Nair  (2014)

Now: Ph.D. Student, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

Malavika conducted research with us in the summer of 2014, working on “Investigating a family of liquid crystal mesogen capped gold nanoparticles via a thiol-for-OAm ligand exchange - synthesis, cleaning and characterisation”. 

For her accomplishments, she was awarded with the Armourers and Brasiers Company European Placement Prize.

After completing her M.Sci. in Materials Science at the University of Cambridge she remained in Cambridge to pursue doctoral research. 

Edward Jones (2013)

Now: Teacher of Mathematics, Wellington College, Swindon, UK

Ed spent the summer of 2013 in our labs at EPFL as an exchange student from the University of Cambridge. 

His research project was titled “Monolayer protected gold nanoparticles: interaction and assembly”. 

Tjonnie Li (2008/09)

Now: Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Tjonnie carried out his final year research project in our lab as part of his M.Sci. degree in Natural Sciences. 

His research project was titled “Plasmonic enhancement of dye-sensitized solar Cells”. 

After a PhD in subatomic physics, Tjonnie was a Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltec and now leads his own group as a Professor for gravitational-wave physics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong