Current Group


Jonathan Burton Jon is Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow at Somerville College. He is the team leader. Having spent his undergraduate days in Oxford, Jon moved to Cambridge and stayed there for 13 years as a Ph.D. student with Prof. Andrew Holmes FRS, Post-Doc and academic. During this time he spent one year as a Post-Doc in Paris with Prof. Alexander Alexakis. Outside of chemistry he enjoys being middle-aged with interests such as cooking, films and a bit of running.





Post-Doctoral Co-Workers

Manjeet Kumar Manjeet gained his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine with Dr. Bhahwal Ali Shah. Soon after his Ph.D., he joined Purdue University for postdoctoral studies and later on moved to Prof. McNulty's group in McMaster University. He worked in medicinal chemistry and asymmetric catalysis involving organocatalysts. He is currently working on the total synthesis of a complex biologically active natural products.  Outside the lab, he loves playing and watching sports




Bruno Sousa  Bruno Sousa was born in Brazil and his career in organic chemistry started as an undergraduate student in 2008 at Universidade de São Paulo, where he also obtained his Ph.D. in 2014. Before Joining the Burton Group in 2017.  Dr Sousa’s previous experience comprises two postdoc fellowships and 2 years as medicinal chemist in a multinational pharmaceutical company. Dr Sousa is particularly interested in the total synthesis of biologically relevant and structurally challenging natural products    





D.Phil. Students

4th Year

Kilian Garrec Kilian obtained a chemical engineering degree and a Masters in Organic and Bioorganic chemistry from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Mulhouse and Montpellier (France) in 2014. During his undergraduate studies he had the opportunity to do a one-year placement at Scynexis in Research Triangle Park (USA) and a 6-month placement at Roche in Basel (Switzerland) both in Drug Discovery. He started his D.Phil.  as part of the EPSRC Centre for doctoral training in Synthesis for Biology and Medicine (SBM CDT) programme at the end of 2014. Outside of chemistry, he enjoys gardening, repairing bicycles, making home-made 3D pictures and playing the Irish Tin Whistle.

Joseph Mason Joe completed his undergraduate MChem at the University of Oxford, and worked in medicinal chemistry for his undergraduate research project. He is currently completing a rotation project in synthetic organic electrochemistry as part of his DPhil course in the Oxford CDT. Outside the lab, he enjoys swimming, cycling and wife-carrying.




3rd Year

Sam Chan Sam was an undergraduate at the University of Hong Kong and worked on intramolecular (4+3) cycloaddition of aziridinyl enolsilanes for his final year project with Prof. Pauline Chiu. He was a visiting student reading Chemistry at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 2013. After the completion of his undergraduate studies in June 2015, he started his DPhil in the Burton group in October the same year and is currently working on a synthesis based project on oxonium ions, natural products and rearrangement reactions. Besides chemistry, he particularly enjoys instrumental jazz and is learning to play a bit of it on the guitar.




2nd / 3rd year

Nada Kurdi Nada studied for her undergraduate MSci at Queen Mary University of London where she worked on aryne chemistry. She joined the University of Oxford as part of the Synthesis for Biology and Medicine CDT. Away from the lab she is a musical festival veteran, the first person on the dance floor and a reluctant exerciser.




Sean Guggiari Sean studied for his undergraduate MSci at the University of Cambridge where he worked on C–H activation methodology. He joined the University of Oxford as part of the Synthesis for Biology and Medicine CDT and is currently working on the total synthesis of a natural product. Outside of the lab, he enjoys playing badminton and immersing himself in nature.






1st / 2nd year

Thomas Sheridan Tom is the recipient of a University of Oxford’s Clarendon Scholarship. Born in Swansea, Tom completed his MChem in Chemistry at the University of York. For his Master’s year project, Tom worked on C2-arylation of tryptophan and derivatives mediated by Palladium. Tom was awarded the Whinfield Medal for the best overall performance by an MChem student on completion of his course. He is currently working on organophotochemistry.



Owen Smith  Owen completed his undergraduate degree at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. After summer research projects at KIT and Univeristät Ulm, he completed his Part II research project under the supervision of Prof. Martin Smith on the methodological lacuna of asymmetric C-acylation. When not in the lab, hiking or doing water sports, Owen can often be found putting Chemistry to good use through cooking, baking and amateur wine making.  Owen is jointly supervised by Profs Bruton, Smith and Paton.  




1st year

Daniel Brown Daniel completed his undergraduate MChem degree at the University of Sheffield during which he spent a year placement at Syngenta working on herbicide synthesis in the robotic synthesis team. Following this he spent the duration of his final year project working on synthetic methodology for a novel caspase inhibitor. He joins the University of Oxford as part of the iCASE programme and is working on the design and synthesis of small molecule probes in collaboration with Syngenta. Outside of the lab, Daniel enjoys playing a variety of sports including squash and football.



Part II

Denis Hartmann Originally from Austria, Denis came to Oxford for his undergraduate degree in chemistry. He is now doing his Part II project in the Burton group on tetrasubstituted alkenes. He also spent the summer of 2016 at the LMU Munich in the Lotsch group, working on functional nanomaterials. Outside of the lab, he enjoys playing the bassoon, learning Japanese, playing videogames, cooking and baking.




Group Presentation 2017_full.ppt

Claire Mainwaring  Claire is an undergraduate student at Pembroke college who is currently undertaking her part ii year. She is working on a methodology based project with the aim of producing the diterpene, pepluanin. Outside the lab Claire enjoys running, boxing and pub quizzes. 


© Jonathan Burton 2015