Team members
Rebecca Musgrave
Rebecca is from London (UK), and obtained her MChem degree in 2012 from the University of Oxford, working for Prof. Jose Goicoechea during her final year project on low-valent organometallics. She then undertook doctoral work on the synthesis, characterisation and application of metallocene-based polymers at Bristol University with Prof. Ian Manners. After this she won a Marie Curie Global Fellowship to work jointly with Prof. Ted Betley (Harvard University) and Dr. Rodolphe Clérac (CNRS) on transition metal clusters and their magnetic properties. She joined the Department of Chemistry at King's College London in July 2020.
Dr Rajeev Nishad
Rajeev is from India, and completed his M.Sci at DDU Gorakhpur University. Afterward, he obtained his PhD degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras under the supervision of Dr Arnab Rit in 2021. His PhD work was mainly focused on the synthetic and catalytic application of N-Heterocyclic carbene (NHC) based transition metal complexes. After his PhD, he worked for a year in Gulf Oil International as an R&D Scientist. In 2023, he began working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Musgrave lab.
Benedict Thompson
Benedict is a 3rd year PhD student working on the synthesis of heterobimetallic complexes. He completed a BSc in chemistry at the University of Warwick in 2020, including a year in industry researching novel water-borne polymer technologies for AkzoNobel Paints and Coatings. This was followed by an MRes at the University of York on the synthesis and characterisation of quadruply-bonded dimolybdenum paddlewheel complexes, before joining the Musgrave group in February 2022. In 2024 he participated in the G. T. Seaborg Institute Graduate Research Program at Los Alamos National Laboratory (US).
Nadia Stephaniuk
Nadia is a 1st-year PhD student and is from Canada. She obtained her BSc[H] as a double major in Chemistry & Forensic Science from the University of Windsor (Ontario, Canada) in 2017, and subsequently obtained her MSc in Chemistry from UWindsor in 2019 under the supervision of Dr. Jeremy Rawson. Her research focused on the inclusion chemistry of sulfur-nitrogen and selenium-nitrogen heterocyclic radicals into porous metal-organic frameworks, as well as crystal engineering of radical-radical cocrystals. In this work, Nadia gained experience in main group and supramolecular chemistry, as well as a range of instrumentation techniques, particularly EPR spectroscopy and PXRD. Nadia came to King's two years ago and joined the teaching staff in King's Forensics in the summer of 2022 as a Teaching Fellow on the MSc Forensic Science and MSc Analytical Toxicology programmes at KCL. She acted as module lead for the students' chemistry modules, gaining significant experience across delivering lectures and laboratory practicals, designing assessments and grading of students' works, and overseeing chemistry-focused research projects. Nadia has since joined the Musgrave group for her PhD and will be working on investigations into bimetallic organometallic intermediates of significance to enzymatic processes.
Si Zhe Wang
Si Zhe is a Singaporean 1st year PhD student. He completed his undergraduate MSci Chemistry with Medicinal Chemistry at Imperial College London. He previously completed his MSci project with Prof. James Bull on sulfoxamine anion reactivities and has worked on a summer undergraduate research project in Imperial with Prof. Alan Spivey on androgen receptor proteolysis targeting chimeras (AR-PROTACs) synthesis. Si Zhe is currently based in both Musgrave and Cobb groups for his PhD and will be investigating the synthesis of metal-binding foldamers for asymmetric catalysis.
Aaron Langston
Aaron is from Hertfordshire, UK and completed his BSc in biochemistry at King's College London. He worked within the Conte Lab to investigate the protein-RNA interactions of LARP4B, and is now continuing at KCL within the Musgrave and Sedgwick groups to complete an MRes. He will be computationally investigating platinum chemotherapy agents, and introduce biological work to verify results in vivo. Aaron currently plans to enter industry after completing his Master's, but is also open to the idea of pursuing a PhD.
Leo Weng-Hogan
Leo is from Birmingham, UK and moved to London to pursue an undergraduate Integrated Master’s in Chemistry degree at KCL. He initially joined the Musgrave group (2023) under the Kings Undergraduate Research Fellowship scheme and has returned in his 4th year to continue investigating organometallic complexes in enzymes and their reaction pathways. Leo has interests in inorganic synthesis as well as medicinal/drug chemistry; he is hoping to work in these related fields in the future. Currently, Leo is considering the possibility of pursuing a PhD after completing his Master’s.
Olivia Zaks
Olivia is a 4th year Integrated Masters in Chemistry student from Toronto, Canada. She first joined the Musgrave Group under the Royal Society of Chemistry Undergraduate Research Fellowship Scheme (2023). During this 8-week period, she worked on the synthesis of NHC/thiolate ligands that were further metalated with corresponding Ni/Zn salts. Currently, she is continuing this project in her Master's year with a focus on analysing the complexes' electronic parameters. She hopes to pursue a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry after graduation.
Alumni
Dr Dan Wilson
PDRA '23
Jacob Seddon-Wilson
MSci 23/24
Lilian Karim
MSci 22/23
Carolina Candia
Visiting researcher '22
Tannith-Jade Cole
Undergraduate researcher '22
Valerie Tsoi
Undergraduate researcher '22
Anson Cherk
Undergraduate researcher '22
Till Neumann
Visiting researcher '22
Denny Hebron
MSci 21/22
Dan Graycon
MSci 20/21
Heidi Hamilton
MSci 20/21