Group members

Post-Doctoral Researchers

Harpreet Kaur

Harpreet is from India, and completed her MSc in Chemistry from Panjab University, Chandigarh, India in 2015. She obtained her PhD from Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, India in 2022. During her PhD, she mainly worked on the multifunctional metal-organic frameworks for the wastewater treatment. She joined PAW group as a research fellow and will be working on development of porous solids (MOFs & Zeolites) for the direct capture of CO₂ from the air (DAC). Harpreet enjoys cooking, travelling and exploring new places.

PhD students

Soneni Ndlovu

Soneni is from South Africa and completed her MChem Chemistry with Study in Industry from the University of Sheffield (2020). She spent one year (2018-2019) working at Scott Bader Ltd, Wollaston, Wellingborough, developing oil thickeners during her industrial placement year. Soneni started her PhD on MOFs as bifunctional catalysts in organic synthesis under the joint supervision of Professor Wright and Professor M. Clarke in August 2020. Her PhD is jointly funded by EPSRC and GSK. Soneni enjoys a good laugh, jogging and tasting food from different cultures.

Malavika Manoj

Malavika is from India and completed her Integrated M.Sc. in Chemistry from ISERC, Visva-Bharati University (2022). During her final year, as part of her dissertation, she worked on the synthesis and reliability studies of gas sensors in the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She started her PhD in September 2022, under the joint supervision of Professor Wright and Professor Ashbrook. Her work focuses on understanding the structure of zeolite frameworks. She also works closely with her collaborators in Johnson Matthey. Malavika enjoys cooking, going on walks and watching movies in her spare time.

Yuan Yuan Du

Yuanyuan is from China and completed her MChem in Chemistry at St Andrews (2023). In her final year project, she studied the effect of anions in zeolite synthesis when she first joined the group. She started her PhD in January 2024. Her work focuses on zeotypes synthesis and their applications in water harvesting. She collaborates with the Materials Discovery Research Institute. Yuanyuan enjoys playing boardgames and exploring new things in her spare time.

Simon Dib

Simon is from Lebanon, and completed his BSc in Chemistry (2018) and MEng in Chemical Engineering (2020) from McGill University, Canada. Since then, he has worked in the cosmetics and agrochemical industries as an analytical and materials chemist. His overall work has mostly focused on the solid-state characterisation of materials as well as their analysis in operando. He started his PhD project in the PAW research group (February 2024) with the close industrial collaboration of Johnson Matthey, focusing on synthesizing novel zeolite structures via modelled organic structure directing agents