People
Based in the School of Life Sciences, our drug discovery team us made up of medicinal chemists, cell and molecular biologists, protein structural biologists, electrophysiologists and assay development scientists.
Meet the team
Prof Erika Mancini
SDDC Director
Prof John Spencer
Head of Medicinal Chemistry
Dr Antony Oliver
Structural Biology Advisor
Dr Haitham Hassan
Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry & Drug Discovery
Trudy Myers
Research Projects Manager
Scientific Advisory Board
Prof Adrian Gill
Senior Vice President, Discovery Chemistry, REVOLUTION Medicines
Prof Martin Gosling
Honorary Professor of Drug Discovery (Biochemistry)
Dr Carol Austin
Senior Director Drug Discovery Project Management at Eurofins Discovery
Prof Michelle Garrett
Professor of Cancer Therapeutics, University of Kent
Visiting scientists and associates
Prof Roger Corder
Visiting Honorary Professor
Dr Matthew Duncton
Visiting Scientist
Prof Tony Moore
Emeritus Professor (Biochemistry)
Dr Daniel Guest
Visiting Scientist
Dr Sarah Lilley
Visiting Scientist
Medicinal chemistry
Chemistry co-leads
Claire Adcock
Research Fellow (Biochemistry)
Andrew McGown
Research Fellow (Chemistry)
Medicinal chemists
Dr Damien Crepin
Research Fellow in Medicinal Chemistry
Dr Yan Lin
Royal Society K C Wong International Fellow
Biology
Heydaythul ‘Shamim’ Choudhury
Visiting Scientist
Dr Kay Osborn
Research Fellow in Cell Biology
Helen Webb
Research Fellow in Biochemistry
Dr Mohan Rajasekaran
Research Fellow in Protein and Structural Biology
Dr Sarah Connery
Research Fellow in Protein and Structural Biology
Dr Jessica Booth
Research Fellow in Assay Development & Screening
Davy Ogilvie-Park
Research Assistant in Cancer Biology
PhD Students
Ben Spivey
Ben joins us from the University of Oxford where he studied for an integrated master’s degree in chemistry (MChem). For his PhD he will be investigating targeted hop components as new antimicrobials in Prof John Spencer's group.
Maria Staikopoulou
Maria undertook her degree and Masters at Sussex and she also completed her MSci project in SDDC before starting as a PhD student. Maria will be supervised by Dr Haitham Hassan.
Kono Washio
Kono's PhD with the School of Life Sciences and Diamond Light Source is on 'Integrating High-Throughput Biophysics and Structural Biology for Accelerated Molecular Discovery'. Previously Kono completed an MRes in Structural Biology following a BSc in Biochemistry at Imperial College. Kono will be supervised by Profs Erika Mancini and John Spencer.
Will Preston
Will's PhD will research 'Novel linkerology in PROTACs', supervised by Prof John Spencer and Dr Storm Hassell-Hart. Will previously studied at King's College London and then completed an MSc in Drug Discovery at Sussex.