Dr Mélanie Roffet-Salque holds a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship in the School of Chemistry, which supports her research into the untapped potential of lipids extracted from archaeological pottery vessels to serve as a novel proxy for palaeoprecipitation and explores the link between climate change and human response in the past. Mélanie is based in the Organic Geochemistry Unit at the School of Chemistry and has collaborations with a number of Faculties and Schools within the University, as well as with archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, geneticists and modellers at institutions throughout Europe.

Since 2018, Mélanie has received two Enhancement Awards from the Royal Society, a NERC New Investigator grant and is currently collaborating on five interdisciplinary ERC grants. Mélanie acts as an academic link for the postgraduate community and runs an MChem-level course on molecular and isotope approaches to investigating the past. In 2022 Melanie was appointed to a proleptic lectureship in the School of Chemistry.

Dr Alastair Lennox was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2017. His research falls under the Synthesis and Catalysis Research Theme at the School of Chemistry, as it focusses on the development of novel synthetic organic methodologies. His group has a strong focus on sustainability and mechanism, and in particular, explores the use of electrochemistry as a tool for performing selective redox transformations in synthesis. The synthesis of fluorinated molecules and building blocks is a dominant application of his methods.

Ali was awarded an EPSRC New Investigator Award in 2019 and a Starting Grant from the European Research Council in 2020. In addition to this support, his group works with several industrial partners, including GSK and Syngenta. Ali was appointed to a proleptic lectureship in 2020. Ali is ‘Careers Lead’ for the School of Chemistry, he is an active member of the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion committee, and convenes the Synthesis and Catalysis Research Theme seminar series. Ali is also involved in undergraduate teaching for 2nd and 3rd year organic and inorganic chemistry.

Dr Beatrice Collins was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2018. Her research is focused on the design and development of autonomously operating molecular motors. Her group uses modern synthetic methodologies (e.g. transition metal catalysis, photoredox catalysis, enzymatic biocatalysis) as a means of tackling the challenges posed by the development of out-of-equilibrium functional molecular systems. Since the award of her fellowship, Beatrice received further Enhancement Awards from the Royal Society, a Research Project Grant from The Leverhulme Trust for a project developed in collaboration with Professor Jonathan Clayden, and an EPSRC New Horizons Award which supports her research into the transport of molecular cargo.

Beatrice sits on the School’s Research Committee as the Early Career Representative, has been involved in mentorship programmes at the University, both as a mentor and as a mentee, and is involved in undergraduate teaching for 2nd and 3rd year organic chemistry. Beatrice is also a supervisor on the EPSRC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training in Technology Enhanced Chemical Synthesis. Beatrice has recently returned from a period of maternity leave.

Dr Michael Beswick Price was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2023. Michael grew up in Timaru, New Zealand and undertook undergraduate studies in physics at the University of Otago, and the University of California Berkeley, before doing his PhD under Professor Sir Richard Friend in the Optoelectronics group at the University of Cambridge, UK. His PhD research focused on the optical properties of lead halide perovskites.

After his PhD, he worked for the non-governmental organisation, The Smart Villages Initiative, studying how to improve energy access in rural areas in developing countries, before doing a Postdoc in Cambridge on conjugated polymer nanowire photophysics. In 2018, he began at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, working alongside the ultrafast spectroscopy research group of Professor Justin Hodgkiss, and becoming a lecturer and Rutherford Discovery Fellow in 2022. He began his research at the University of Bristol in 2023 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow.

Professor M. Carmen Galan joined the University of Bristol in 2006 as a lecturer in the School of Chemistry following doctoral and postdoctoral studies in the USA (The University of Georgia, The Scripps Research Institute, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology). In 2008, Carmen was awarded a Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship from the Royal Society to support her independent research career and from 2012 to 2017 she held a five-year EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship. In 2015 she was awarded an ERC Consolidator Award and was promoted to Reader. Since 2017 she has held the position of Professor in the School of Chemistry. She is also the Editor-In-Chief of the journal Carbohydrate Research.

The Galan group uses synthetic organic chemistry as a tool to probe and manipulate the structure and function of biologically relevant molecules to study biological problems and potentially discover treatments for diseases. The group’s work is highly interdisciplinary, and they collaborate with colleagues throughout the University and across the globe. In  2017, she was awarded the RSC Carbohydrate Chemistry Dextra prize for her contributions to carbohydrate chemistry. Carmen is involved in teaching organic chemistry at all undergraduate levels and is director of the MSci in Chemistry with Study Abroad.