The lab

Walk the floor.

On the fourth floor of the Chemistry & Materials Building, the group runs a ≈130 m² organic synthesis laboratory, a ≈200 m² AI & automated chemistry laboratory, an instrument suite, a reagent store, offices, and meeting rooms — purpose-built, and equipped so an idea never queues to become a result.

Floor 4 · Chemistry & Materials Building

Everything a corridor apart.

The group’s rooms line one corridor: two purpose-built laboratories, analysis and computing one door from synthesis, and the offices, meeting rooms, and lounge that make long projects livable. Below is the whole set in walking order — every stop photographed as it stands, and every photograph opens.

  • 100+instrument & equipment units in the working inventory
  • 26fume hoods in the group's laboratories
  • 192parallel photo / electro reaction positions
  • ≈1,000CPU cores on the group's own cluster
  1. The corridor

    Floor 4 of the Chemistry & Materials Building wraps around a central atrium, so every door on this page is a short walk along one loop of corridor.

  2. 415
    Organic synthesis laboratory≈130 m²

    Rows of face-velocity-monitored fume hoods with double vacuum/gas manifolds, a central prep island, colour-coded safety cabinets, and the group's nameplate over every sash — the wet heart of the group.

  3. 411
    Instrument & analysis room

    Chromatography, mass spectrometry, and spectroscopy one door from the bench — each station on the centre island under its own extraction arm, so routine analysis never leaves the floor.

  4. 412
    Reagent store

    Colour-coded safety cabinets — flammables, oxidisers, corrosives — sorted, locked, and labelled, so stock is found in seconds rather than hunted.

  5. 414
    AI & automated chemistry laboratory≈200 m²

    The group's second, larger laboratory is a dedicated AI and automated chemistry facility, now under construction at full speed — there will be much more to show here soon.

  6. 419
    Research staff office

    A fixed workstation and an ergonomic chair for every member, a glass whiteboard wall for the arguments that matter, and the quiet a computational afternoon needs — separate from the wet labs.

  7. 436 · 420
    Meeting rooms

    A large conference room for group meetings and a smaller glass-walled discussion room for subgroups — both wired for video calls, two doors apart.

  8. Pantry & lounge

    An espresso machine, a microwave, and armchairs overlooking the atrium — where group dinners get planned and reactions get argued over while they stir.

Instruments & equipment

The working inventory.

Grouped by what it lets us do, not by maker. Every entry stands in the rooms today — the × N plates are real counts, and every card opens to photographs and the full record.

REA

Reaction & synthesis

Air-free technique, photochemistry, electrochemistry, and temperature extremes — the hardware to run almost any transformation in-house.

PUR

Purification & work-up

From crude mixture to clean compound without leaving the room.

ANA

Analysis & characterisation

Identity, purity, and mechanism read out in-house — on the same floor as the flask.

CMP

Computing

DFT, descriptors, and machine learning run on the group's private nodes — the university's shared cluster is there for overflow, never the bottleneck.

SUP

Support & infrastructure

The unglamorous machines that keep a laboratory honest — all of them in-house.

Instruments photograph well. They are better in person.

Come see the floor.

We welcome PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting or undergraduate researchers across all three directions.

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