People

Prof Kylie Vincent

Professor of Inorganic Chemistry,
Associate Head of Department (People),
Fellow and Tutor in Inorganic Chemistry at Jesus College Oxford,
Associate-Director of OxICFM and IMAT Centres for Doctoral Training

Research Fellows and Postdocs

Dr Stephen Carr

Steve is a structural biologist with labs at the Research Complex at Harwell. We rely heavily on Steve's expertise in protein preparation and crystallisation, x-ray diffraction and other areas of structural biology. Steve is employed on BBSRC-funded NextGenStructBiol.

Dr Natalia Dyachenko

Natalia is employed on EIC / UKRI funded W-Biocat project.

Dr Oska Pugh

Oska received his Masters at Manchester Metropolitan University focusing on fragment-based drug discovery under the joint supervision of Dr Mark McLaughlin and Dr Vittorio Caprio. He then moved on to a PhD in chemistry at the University of Nottingham as part of the Sustainable Chemistry CDT supervised by Prof. Ross Denton, focusing on organosilicon chemistry for synthetic methodology development. Outside of chemistry Oska enjoys PC and tabletop gaming, and hiking. In the Vincent group Oska has worked on biocatalytic nitro reductions and on an iCAST project, and is now supported by SCHEMA Hub.

Lab. Technician

Plastida Syntemg Umwi

Plastida is a lab. technician who supports research in the group by assisting with enzyme preparation. She is working on the BBSRC funded NextGenStructBiol project.

Postgraduate students: DPhil and MRes

Zehui Duan

Zehui is a final year DPhil student at Jesus College. She is co-supervised by Prof. Vincent and Dr. Patricia Rodríguez Macía. She focuses on using advanced spectroscopy techniques to study the iron-sulfur clusters of FeFe-hydrogenase. She graduated from Imperial College London with a MRes in Plastic Electronic Materials. She got her B.S. in Chemical Engineering in Taiwan and was also an invited student in Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). In her spare time, she enjoys debating and traveling.

Shoba Laxmi

Shoba is a final year DPhil student at Brasenose College from Singapore, interested in uncovering the intricacies of metalloenzymes, and working on single crystal spectroelectrochemistry for structure-function studies of nitrogenases. She obtained both her BSc and Master's degree in Chemistry from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Apart from research, she loves travelling, does photography, dabbles in scrapbooking and is a big fan of F1.

Prasita Dutta

Prasita is a final year DPhil student. She is currently working on single crystal spectroelectrochemistry for structure-function studies of NiFe CODH, working closely with Stephen Carr. Prasita completed her bachelor's degree in chemistry from St. Stephen's College in Delhi, India. Besides chemistry, she is particularly enthusiastic about hitting a good workout at the gym, dancing her heart out on-stage or simply the fact that she is quadrilingual.

Nazakat Ali

Ali is a final year DPhil student at Jesus College working on chemo-bio catalysis.

Euan Sarson

Euan is an OxICFM CDT DPhil student at Trinity College researching europium redox systems to image transient hypoxia. His project is co-supervised by Prof. Stephen Faulkner. Before arriving in Oxford, he studied for his MChem at Durham University, with the research for his master's thesis conducted at KU Leuven. Outside the lab, he enjoys keeping up-to-date with politics, cooking for friends, and grooving to groovy tunes.

Zhengxi Ou (Kevin)

I am a DPhil student at Wolfson College. Before coming to Oxford, I completed my Master's degree in Chemical Science at the National University of Singapore. My project mainly focuses on the reduction of nitro groups in aromatic compounds. In my leisure time, I usually play video games and watch movies. Besides, I also enjoy playing table tennis and swimming.

Xinyue Wu (Luna)

Luna is a 2nd year DPhil student at St Hilda's College. Her project is to explore the use of hydrogenase to support the application of enzymes involved in oxygenation reactions, via supply of electrons for partial reduction of dioxygen. In her spare time, she enjoys running, reading, singing, dancing and learning different languages and new things.

Anina Kureekal

Anina is a DPhil student at Jesus College, currently working on an EPSRC iCASE project. She obtained her BSc and MSc degrees in Chemistry from the University of Basel. Her research primarily focuses on more sustainable biocatalytic imine reductions, using a hydrogen-driven cofactor recycling system. In addition to her passion for Chemistry, she enjoys traveling, cooking, and creating digital art.

Shreya Sharma

Shreya is a DPhil student at Somerville College, supported by the Oxford Indira Gandhi Graduate Scholarship. In the Vincent group, she is particularly interested in optimizing biocatalytic pathways of enzymes, transforming the deemed "expensive" processes into cost-effective chemical reactions for sustainable polymer synthesis and degradation. Shreya envisions revolutionising clean chemical manufacturing and recycling, for a greener, more sustainable future. She holds a Master of Research in Catalysis: Chemistry and Engineering from Imperial College London.

Efstratios (Stratos) Nikolaidis

Stratos is an IMAT EPSRC CDT student in Jesus College. Coming from the Greek city of Patras, he moved to the UK a few years before starting his undergraduate studies in the University of Warwick. Now, his research project is focused on Cytochrome P450 enzymes, specifically to simplify their electron transport chain in order to facilitate their use in biocatalysis. In the remaining time, Stratos is passionate about music (like guitar and traditional Greek instruments), various sports, cooking and occasionally making (as well as testing!!) wine.

Aoyang Liu (Lay)

Aoyang obtained a BSc in Chemistry from Univ. Nottingham in 2024, having spent his first two years in their campus in China, and the final two years in the UK. During summer 2023, he worked in the Glyco-science Lab at Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica for two months, analysing structures of polysaccharides. In 2025, he started a DPhil on the IMAT CDT under the supervision of Prof. Michail Stamatakis and Prof. Kylie Vincent. His project is about studying the mechanisms of nitro reduction on carbon by both experimental and computational methods (DFT and kinetic Monte Carlo).

Rohit Das

Rohit Das is a DPhil student at St Peter's College. He is interested in understanding structure–function relationships in metalloenzymes, from ferredoxins to NiFe hydrogenase systems, to probe their mechanisms of electron transfer and catalysis. He completed his BSc and MSc in Chemistry at Scottish Church College, University of Calcutta, and undertook research at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) on FeFe hydrogenase model complexes. Outside the lab, Rohit has an immense passion for public speaking, poetry, and geopolitical discourse.

Anna Leow

Anna is an MRes student at St Hilda's College. Originally from Singapore, she completed her BA and MSci in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, specialising in chemistry. Her research explores the use of hydrogenase to power sustainable halogenase catalysis. Outside the lab, she enjoys fencing, cooking, travelling and reading.

MChem (Part II) Students

Gabriel Perez Pineda

Gabriel is a Part II student at Somerville, working on selective biocatalysed hydrogenation. He loves music, food, travelling, and is excited to be a part of the Vincent group.

Tianyi Gao

Abigail Moss

Abi is a Part II Chemistry student at Keble College. She is working with Natalia to investigate hydrogen-driven biocatalytic cascades. Outside the lab, Abi is Captain of the Oxford University Netball Blues and enjoys sport and spending time with friends.

Former DPhil students

2026 Wangzhe Li

2025 Sofia Helin

2025 Jiayu Peng

2025 Tara Lurshay

2025 Tin Pou (Sam) Lai

2025 Maya Landis

2025 Charlotte Hancox

2024 Kin Long Wong (Chris)

2024 Xu Zhao

2024 Lucy Browne

2024 Yu Sun

2022 Sophie Kendall-Price

2022 Shiny Joseph Srinivasan

2021 Barnabas Poznansky (Barney)

2021 Jiaao Wei

2020 Ting Chen

2020 Tianze Zhu

2020 Justin Weeks

2017 Thomas Lonsdale

2017 Kouji Urata

2016 Ricardo Hidalgo Gonzalez

2016 Gary Chang

2015 Ian McPherson

2015 Min-Wen Chung

2015 Jonathan Quinson (joint with Nicole Grobert at Materials)

2015 Holly Reeve

2014 Daniel Grabarczyk

2014 Pathinan Paengnakorn

2013 Adam Healy

2012 Zulkifli Idris

2012 Juan Liu

Former MRes students

2016 Ceren Zor (jointly supervised with Prof Nicole Grobert, Materials)

Former Oxford MChem (Part II) students

2024-2025

Fangqi Di

Sam Power

Imogen Shaw

Amy Shaw

2023-2024

Louis Hill

Max Robertson

Frankie Frazer

Sophie Littlewood

2022-2023

Oliver Neville

2021-2022

Hazel Rycroft

Joe Addy

Zipporah Hodder

Georgia Stonadge

2020-2021

Yifei (Jefferson) Chen

Amy Lian

Asher Winter

Hannah Taylor

2019-2020

Simona Everts

Nina Jenkins

Sharoon Lassen

Saloni Pun

Peter Todd

2018-2019

Nisa (Raja) Ashman

Amelia Brasnett

Maria Ryan

2017-2018

Jake Nicholson

Ben Rackham

2016-2017

Sophie Kendall-Price

Katherine Page

Rachael Ng

2015-2016

Farieha Altaf

Matthew Burnett

Rebecca Shutt

2014-2015

Michael Ash

Justin Weeks

2013-2014

Benjamin Aucott

Eleanor Hall

Chloe Tomlinson

Ingvild Gudim

2012-2013

Ben Bluestone

Charlie Stevens

Jenny Bradley

Thomas Lonsdale

2011-2012

Tom Lyle

Lucie Dearlove

Thomas Bloomfield

Robert Spence

2010-2011

Charlotte McKenna

Henry Waite

Kate Simpson-Wells

Ian McPherson

2009-2010

Ean Ong

Holly Reeve

2008-2009

Adam Healy

Rachel White

Former Postdoctoral Researchers

2025-2026: Jiayu Peng

Following his DPhil in the group, Jiayu Peng worked as a researcher on an Impact Acceleration Account project to develop applications of hydrogen-driven biocatalytic halogenation.

2022 to 2024: Elizabeth (Liz) Phillips

Liz held a Schmidt Postdoctoral Fellowship in the group, and worked on coupled spectroscopy and electrochemistry of hydrogenase crystals.

2022 to 2025: Daria Sokolova

Daria worked as a postdoctoral researcher funded by iCAST on biocatalytic nitro hydrogenations and then took up a SNSF Fellowship in the group, before leaving in January 2025 to take up a position at EMBO. She was a key member of the 'nitro hydrogenations team' awarded a RSC Horizon Interface Prize in 2025.

2017 to 2022: Tim Sudmeier

Tim contributed to a wide range of catalysis projects in the group as a postdoc and also carried out science policy work at the Royce Institute. He has moved on to work in energy policy in Berlin.

2017 to 2022: Patricia Rodriguez

Patricia first arrived as a postdoc in the Vincent group, and then held a Glasstone Fellowship. She brought lots of expertise in FeFe hydrogenases to the group and contributed to many aspects of our research into enzyme mechanisms. In 2023 she was appointed a Lecturer at the University of Leicester.

2017 to 2022: Rhiannon (Non) Evans

Non was a long-serving postdoc in Oxford Chemistry, firstly in Fraser's Armstrong's group and then in the Vincent group, and we benefitted enormously from her molecular biology skills. She is now employed at HydRegen as Head of Biology and Enzyme Production.

2017 to 2022: Miguel Ramirez

Miguel was a long-serving postdoc in industrial biotechnology and we benfitted from his extensive expertise in protein expression and engineering. He has gone on to use these skills in industrial positions.

2016 to 2021: Jack Rowbotham

Jack was a long-serving postdoc in biotechnology, bringing expertise in organic reactions and implementation of biocatalysis in new ways. He now holds Fellowships at the University of Manchester.

to 2021: Holly Reeve

Holly wins the prize for longest-serving member of the group. During her Part II and DPhil, she developed the HydRegen technology. She was then Project Manager/Co-I on our major 5-year grant from EPSRC/BBSRC/IUK under the Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst to translate the technology to market. Under Holly's expert leadership, this project was a fantastic success, spawning new IP, high-profile publications and new research directions. Near the end of this project, Holly was accepted onto iCURE, secured R&D funding and spun out the company HydRegen Ltd with Kylie, where she is now CEO.

2018-2021: Sarah Cleary

Sarah joined the Vincent group after a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Vermont (USA). She helped to bring green chemistry metrics to evaluate our HydRegen catalyst system and to develop new catalytic applications and reaction scale up in batch and flow. She has now moved into a role as Chief Scientific Officer at spin out company, HydRegen Ltd.

2019-2021: Koji Urata

Koji is a graduate of Oxford University, and his DPhil was a joint project between the Wong and Vincent groups, specialising in hydrogen driven biocatalysis reactions. Koji rejoined the Vincent group in 2019 as a PDRA. Koji has now gone on to a Lab Management role.

2020-2021: Michele Ruggeri

Michele worked in the Vincent group on translating biocatlaytic processes into flow. He subsequently took up a postdoctoral position in Europe.

2020-2021: Adrian Barranco

Adrian worked as a Postdoc on chemo-biocatalysis. He is now a Marketing Officer at Biosynth Carbosynth.

2020: Katrina (Kate) Harris (nee Madden)

Kate was a Postdoc in the group for a short time working on biocatalysis for medicinal chemistry. She is now a Newcastle University Academic Track Fellow in Drug Discovery (School of Natural and Environmental Sciences).

2017-2020: Erin Dodd

Erin worked as a Postdoc in the group on a BBSRC funded project looking at nitrosylation of iron-sulfur proteins before moving to a post as Assistant Professor of Bioinorganic Chemistry at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal.

2019-2020: Renee Haver

Renee worked on our IB Catalyst project team on developing multistep bio- and chemo-bio cascade reactions. She then went on to become a Chemistry teacher in Oxford.

2017-2019: Simone Morra

Simone held a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship and specialised in mechanistic studies of FeFe hydrogenases. In 2020, he was appointed to an independent Fellowship at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he is now Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering.

2011-2019: Philip Ash

Philip was a longstanding postdoc in the group, who made enormous contributions to our development of spectroelectrochemistry of metalloproteins. In 2019, he was appointed as a Lecturer in the School of Chemistry, University of Leicester, UK. We continue to collaborate on enzyme mechanism projects, and our teams often work together during beamtime at Diamond Light Source.

2015-2017: Simantini Nayak

Simantini held a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship and worked on operando infrared studies of the oxygen reduction reaction at supported metal nanoparticle catalyst sites. She then went on to work briefly in industry and is now a Scientist at CSIR-IMMT, India.

2014-2016: Matteo Dutta

Matteo held a Marie Curie Fellowship, his research in the Vincent Group was at the interface between metal- and bioelectrocatalysis for the nitrogen and carbon cycles. He moved on to become Development and Scientific Affairs Director at Quebec Centre for Advanced Materials, Canada.

2012: Lars Lauterbach

Lars Lauterbach worked on an EU-funded project for H2-driven NADH regeneration during 2012. He is now a Professor at the University of Aachen, Germany.