Research Areas

Our research is motivated by the fascination for complex chemical systems and my desire to construct complex functional molecular architectures that are not based on biologically derived building blocks.  Projects underway in the laboratory are based around functional nanoscale polyoxometalate clusters, complexity and emergent chemical systems, functional self assembly, functional surfaces, non-equilibrium supramolecular assembly, self growing nano and micron-scale structures, dissipative chemical systems, molecular evolution, artificial life / cells, as well as simple organic chemistry, ligand design and coordination chemistry. As part of this work we are constantly utilising many synthetic and analytical techniques.  We are investigating synthesis and self assembly in a purpose built system that allows chemical evolution.  We are also developing crystallographic techniques that can cope with our protein sized cluster architectures (direct space electron density synthesis) and we are also the first group in the world to apply temperature controlled high resolution electrospray mass spectrometry to look at reaction kinetics, reaction mechanism, and the self assembly of complex inorganic architectures.