Dr Bao Nguyen

Bao Nguyen is a Professor in Physical Organic Chemistry at University of Leeds, where he has been from September 2012. He actively collaborates with colleagues from both the School of Chemistry and School of Chemical and Process Engineering to address current challenges in green chemistry, process chemistry and AI/Machine Learning. He is a core member of the Institute of Process Research and Development (iPRD), a flagship institute set up by the Leeds Transformation Fund.

Prof. Nguyen did his PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of John M. Brown FRS. He then moved to Michael C. Willis' group, where he developed the first Pd-catalysed coupling reaction employing sulfur dioxide by suppressing catalyst deactivation. Afterward, he joined Imperial College London, working in King Kuok Hii's group to delineate the nature of the palladium species in different catalytic reactions and developing separation methods for these species. He was awarded his first independent position as a Ramsay Memorial Fellow at Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London.

Current Group Members

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  George Hodgin

  George is a home grown PDRA and past PhD student who joined BN group on 2020. His work focuses on the use of cheminformatics and reaction data to predict reaction reaction outcomes in green solvents.

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  Homa Basiri

  Homa is a PhD student sponsored by AstraZeneca, who joined the BN group in November 2024. She completed her masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Nottingham and worked in Mark Cronin's group at LJMU on Endocrine Disruption project (Unilever). Her PhD project aims to use blended surfactant mixtures to perform organic reactions in water.

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  Yoana Borisova

  Yoana is a PhD student who joined the BN group in October 2024. She completed her MSc in Bioinfromatics at the University of Glasgow. Her project will use image analysis for high-throughput colorimetric kinetic profiling.

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  Jago Deane

  Jago is a PhD student who joined the BN group in September 2024. Jago completed his integrated masters at the University of Sussex. His project aims to apply machine learning to design ligands for recycling of metals from lithium batteries. Outside of chemistry Jago enjoys musical theatre and sketching.

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  Rachel Napier

  Rachel is a PhD student sponsored by AstraZeneca, who joined the BN group in September 2023. Rachel completed her integrated masters at the University of York. Her project aims to develop surfactant-enabled nucleophilic fluorination into a general sustainable method by preparing fluorine-containing compounds in water. Outside of chemistry Rachel also enjoys playing badminton and netball.

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  Fong Ching Wai (Andy)

  Andy is a PhD student who joined the BN group in October 2022. His project aims to develop electrochemical flow processes to enable Ni-catalysed reductive coupling reactions with organic reductants. He has completed his bachelors and masters at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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  Samuel Mace

  Samuel is a PhD student who joined the BN group in September 2022. Sam completed his bachelors and integrated masters at the University of Manchester. His project aims is to apply machine learning methodologies in assisting in the design of ligands for catalysis and recycling precious metals from waste streams. When Sam is not thinking about chemistry he is thinking about climbing and music.

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  Asma Aladiyani

  Asma joins the group in 2023 as a joint PhD student with Dr Paul Thornton. She did her MSc chemistry at University of Leeds. Her PhD project is on synthesis and processing novel biodegradable polymers.

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  Sophie Blanch

  Sophie joins the group in 2024 as a MChem student. Her project is to discover biological methods to recover high value metals through use in silico screening.

Previous members