IMAT CDT Management Team
Simon Clarke
Simon has been an independent academic since 1998. He has published ca. 100 papers/patents, has supervised more than 15 doctoral students and 12 PDRAs. His research focuses on the discovery, structures and properties of new solids, and his group has led the UK chemistry effort in discovering iron-based superconductors in close collaboration with colleagues in Oxford Physics (including jointly supervised PG students). SC was awarded the RSC Gibson-Fawcett Award in 2010 for contributions to the chemistry of non- oxide and mixed-anion solids. He is a tutorial fellow at Exeter College.
Director
Simon Aldridge
Simon has been an independent academic for 20 years. During that time he has published >190 papers/patents, supervised 30 doctoral students and 28 post-doctoral research associates (PDRAs) and been awarded a number of prizes for synthetic inorganic chemistry (RSC Frankland Award 2018, RSC Main Group Chemistry Award 2010, Dalton Transactions European Lecturer 2009). He has held visiting professorships at Monash and HKBU. His research interests are in the synthesis and applications of main group and organometallic compounds. He is a tutorial fellow at the Queen's College.
Associate Director
Course content and delivery
Nicole Grobert
Nicole is a Professor of Nanomaterials, a Royal Society Industry Fellow at Williams Advanced Engineering, a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, and a visiting professor at the Bio-Nano Electronics Research Centre at Toyo University, Japan. Her research focuses on the synthesis, processing, and characterisation of novel carbon and non-carbon based nanomaterials, including nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanorods, graphene and other 2D nanomaterials. Nicole Grobert is a vocal defender of best practices and efficient leadership, experience obtained over almost 20 years as a frontline researcher and representative of young researchers in Europe, having previously been the Chair of the Young Academy of Europe and a founder member.
Associate Director
Recruitment and inter-department liaison
Matthew Langton
Matthew began his independent research group in 2018 following the award of the Royal Society University Research Fellowship. He was appointed Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in 2020, and Professor of Chemistry in 2025. Prior to that he held an Oppenheimer Early Career Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (2015-18), working with Professor Chris Hunter FRS.
He studied Chemistry at Lincoln College, University of Oxford, and carried out his Part II research year in the group of Harry Anderson FRS working on mechanically interlocked porphyrin nanorings. This was followed by a DPhil in Inorganic Chemistry (2018), supervised by Professor Paul Beer on rotaxanes and catenanes for anion recognition and sensing in aqueous media, and a brief spell as an EPSRC Doctoral Award PDRA in the same group. His work has been recognised by awards including a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2018), Oppenheimer Fellowship (2015) and an ERC Consolidator grant (2024). He is also Tutor and Fellow in Inorganic Chemistry at Balliol College, Oxford. He leads a research group working on supramolecular, coordination and biological chemistry.
Associate Director
Megan Midson
Megan is the Departmental Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry. She obtained her PhD from Imperial College London, before moving to Oxford to take up a teaching-focused position. She has extensive practical chemistry teaching experience and for several years, she taught and contributed to the design of the chemistry practical course at the University of Oxford. She now teaches students across all three years of the undergraduate inorganic chemistry course and supervises chemistry Part II projects aligned with the fields of inorganic chemistry and chemistry education. Megan is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Associate Director
Academic skills and outreach
Michael Neidig
Originally from a dairy farming community in rural Pennsylvania, Michael received his BA in chemistry from Colgate University in 1999. Following studies at the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar leading to an MPhil degree in chemistry, he moved to Stanford University where he received his PhD in chemistry in 2007 in the group of Professor Edward Solomon. After brief stops at Dow Chemical as a Senior Research Chemist and Los Alamos National Lab as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Michael joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Rochester as an Assistant Professor in 2011 with subsequent promotion to Associate Professor in 2017, Professor in 2020 and the Marshall D. Gates, Jr. Professor of Chemistry in 2021. In 2022, he moved to the University of Oxford as Professor of Chemistry and Tutorial Fellow in Inorganic Chemistry at Magdalen College. His work has been recognised through several awards including a Sloan Research Fellowship (2015), National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2015), a DOE Early Career Award (2016) and an EPSRC Open Fellowship (2025).
Associate Director
Anna Regoutz
Anna received her BSc (2009) and Dipl. Ing. (2010) from the Graz University of Technology, Austria. She conducted her D.Phil. research in Inorganic Chemistry between 2010 and 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Russell Egdell at the University of Oxford and Trinity College. During this time, she was awarded a graduate scholarship by Trinity College and served as the President of the Middle Common Room at Trinity College from 2011-2013. Subsequently, she undertook postdoctoral work at the University of Southampton and Imperial College before taking up an Imperial College Research Fellowship between 2017 and 2019 in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. She was also a CAMS-UK Fellow from 2019 to 2023. From 2019 to 2024, she held a Lectureship in Materials Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at University College London.
Anna was the 2020 recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Joseph Black Award and, in 2019, the IUPAC awarded her the element Praseodymium in the Periodic Table of Chemists.
Anna leads an interdisciplinary and diverse experimental research group in the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory and is a Tutorial Fellow at St Edmund Hall.
Associate Director
Kylie Vincent
Kylie is a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, and Fellow of Jesus College Oxford. Her research includes the application of spectroscopic and electrochemical methods for mechanistic studies of small-molecule activation in biology, and applications of enzyme catalysis in chemical synthesis. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne, Australia (BA/ BSc(Hons), Ph.D.) and has worked in Oxford since 2002 when she joined Fraser Armstrong’s group as a postdoctoral researcher and held an RJP Williams Junior Research Fellowship at Wadham College. In 2007 she took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and was appointed Associate Professor in 2013 and Professor in 2017.
Associate Director
EDI and student experience
Charlotte Williams
Charlotte began her independent academic career in 2004 at Imperial College London and in 2016 she moved to Oxford University. During this time she has published >130 papers and is an inventor on >30 patents. She has supervised >25 DPhil students and 40 postdoctoral researchers. Her work has been recognised by prizes including the Macro Group UK Medal for Polymer Science (2019), the Otto Roelen Medal of Dechema and the German Catalysis Society (2018), the Sir John Meurig Thomas Medal for Catalysis (2017), the RSC Corday Morgan Medal (2016) and the Women in Science and Technology Tech Start-Up Award (2015). She investigates catalysts that transform renewable resources into polymers and dense energy carriers. She applies inorganic chemistry to activate carbon dioxide, to control polymerization processes and to make nanoparticles.
Associate Director
Partner and industry liaison
Maitane Fernandez
Maitane obtained her PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of the Basque Country, Spain. She then moved to LMU-Munich first and Oxford Chemistry next, where she held postdoctoral research positions exploring several organometallic techniques and metal catalysed reactions. In 2017, Maitane moved into research administration and has since worked as a programme manager for the Synthesis for Biology and Medicine CDT (SBM), the Oxford Inorganic Chemistry for Future Manufacturing (OxICFM) and now Inorganic Materials for Advanced Manufacturing (IMAT) CDTs.
Programme Manager
Alexa Caise
Alexa obtained her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, researching the use of Group 13 metal hydrides for catalytic reduction of carbonyl compounds. Following this, she continued in Oxford for three years as a postdoctoral research associate, studying the chemistry of low-valent Group 14 compounds. Since 2021, Alexa has worked as a programme manager for the Oxford Inorganic Chemistry for Future Manufacturing (OxICFM) CDT (Department of Chemistry) and Health Data Science (HDS) CDT (Department of Computer Science). She is now the partner liaison manager for the Inorganic Materials for Advanced Manufacturing (IMAT) and Chemical Synthesis for a Healthy Planet (CSHP) CDTs.
Partner Liaison Manager
Jennie Botham
Jennie has worked for many years in the Department of Chemistry's Teaching Laboratories, as a laboratory technician. She recently moved to a new role and now provides administrative support to the graduate studies office and the CDT office. She works with all four CDTs: IMAT, CSHP, OxICFM and SBM.
CDT Administrator
IMAT CDT
Rodney Porter Building
Sibthorp Road (off South Parks Road)
Oxford, OX1 3RQ
IMAT CDT
Rodney Porter Building
Sibthorp Road (off South Parks Road)
Oxford, OX1 3RQ
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Photo credits: Steve Buchanan, John Cairns, John Freeman, Karl Harrison, Melissa Holloway.