Current averaged geographical origin of the group members (updated November 2025):
Group members
Professor of Theoretical Chemistry
More details can be found here.
Senior Postdoctoral Researcher (since 2021)
Daniel got his PhD from the group of Prof. Petr Slavíček in Prague and is currently developing an automated strategy to calculate photoabsorption cross-sections of atmospheric volatile organic compounds.
Postdoctoral Researcher (since 2024)
Javier received his PhD degree in 2024 from the Universitat de València, Spain, for his computational studies on the photochemistry of atmospheric mercury and sulphur compounds under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Roca-Sanjuán and Dr. Alfonso Saiz-Lopez. He has joined the group to study the light-induced reactivity of deprotonated keto acids in collaboration with the group of Prof. Jan Verlet at Durham University, with a particular interest in analysing the effect that the presence of water molecules can have on the photochemical reactivity of these systems of atmospheric relevance.
Postdoctoral Researcher (since 2025)
Elise received his PhD degree in 2022 from the University of Toulouse, France, on the computational study of innovative photochromic systems under the direction of Dr. Martial Boggio-Pasqua and Ivan Rivalta. She pursued with a Post-doctoral position in the ITODYS laboratory managed by Prof. Antonio Monari, where she studied the photochemistry of metal-complex systems using both static and dynamic methods. She joined the group to work on the environment effect on the photophysical and photochemical behaviour of organic molecules.
Newton International Fellow (since 2025)
Imaad grew up in Kerala, India and received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from IIT Bombay. He then did his master’s at Uppsala University, where he worked with Prof. Roland Lindh for a master’s project. He did his PhD on nonadiabatic tunnelling using instanton theory under the supervision of Prof. Jeremy Richardson at ETH Zürich and has joined the group to develop new theoretical methods that account for non-Born Oppenheimer effects for ground and excited state reactions.
PhD Student (since 2024)
Vera started her Chemistry studies in Vienna, Austria, where she did her Bachelor‘s thesis in the group of Prof. Leticia González. She has joined the group for her Master‘s thesis focusing on the excited state dynamics of a metallorganic ruthenium sandwich complex.
PhD Student (since 2024)
Juliette graduated from the University of Bristol in 2023, completing her final year research project in the Aggarwal group. She is now jointly supervised by Dr Beatrice Collins and is studying the photoabsorption properties and excited-state dynamics of a new class of light-driven rotary molecular motors.
MSc by Research Student (since 2024)
Jasmine completed her undergraduate studies at the University of York, with her final year project undertaken in the Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratory under the supervision of Dr Terry Dillon. She has joined the ISPG for her master’s project focussing on calculating photoabsorption cross sections of key atmospheric molecules, partially those considered exhibiting dark states.
PhD Student (since 2024)
Will graduated in 2023 from the University of Bristol after completing his final year research project in the Clayden group, investigating the photochemistry of lithiated enolates. Will also completed two summer research projects in the Clayden group and Lennox group in 2022 and 2023 respectively. He is now jointly supervised by Jonathan Clayden, studying the excited state dynamics of extended lithium enolates with the aim of creating a new class of pyridine reactivity.
PhD student (since 2023)
Jiří grew up in the Czech Republic where he received his BSc at UCT Prague under the supervision of prof. Petr Slavíček. Currently, he studies the MSc programme of Physical Chemistry also at UCT Prague. His work mainly focuses on the photochemistry of organic biologically relevant compounds such as bilirubin, porphyrin and cyclopropanone.
Currently: PhD Student with Prof. Petr Slavíček at UCT Prague.
PhD student (since 2024)
Freddie Burns is a PhD student at the University of Bristol’s Quantum Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training. He is studying under the supervision of Dr Hugh Burton fom UCL, and Professor Basile Curchod at Bristol. His studies focus on integrating quantum computing hardware into high-performance computing platforms for modelling molecular dynamics. Freddie has an undergraduate degree in physics from Imperial College London and previously worked as a secondary school teacher.
PhD student (since 2025)
Claudia completed her Chemistry studies at the University of Bologna, Italy, with a Master focused on photochemistry and molecular materials. For her Master’s thesis, she joined the Théosim group under the supervision of Dr. Federica Agostini. She began her PhD with Dr. Agostini, in collaboration with the ISPG in Bristol, focusing on the study of nonadiabatic dynamics processes inside optical cavities, where the strong light-matter coupling regime is achieved.
Alumni
Postdoctoral researchers
- Dr Federico J. Hernández (2024-2024) – following step: Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London.
- Dr Dasha Shchepanovska (2022-2023) – following step: Scientist at the Met Office.
- Dr Antonio Prlj (2018-2022) – following step: Research Associate at the Rudjer Boskovic Institute in Zagreb (Theoretical Chemistry Group), Croatia.
PHD Students
- Dr Jack Taylor (2021-2025) – following step: Postdoctoral Researcher at Rutgers University (Maitra group), US.
- Dr Yorick Lassmann (2020-2025) – following step: Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague (Muchová group), Czech Republic.
- Dr Harry Stroud (2022-2024) – following step: Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centro Singular de Investigación en Tecnoloxías Intelixentes (Glowacki group), Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
- Dr Emanuele Marsili (2019-2023) – following step: Quantum Computing Scientist at Airbus, Bristol.
- Dr Lewis Hutton (2019-2023) – following step: Postdoctoral Researcher at Oxford University (Kirrander group).
- Dr Lea Maria Ibele (2018-2022) – following step: Postdoctoral Researcher at Université Paris-Saclay (Agostini group), France.
Project Students
- Cara Woods (2024-2025
- Jan Cathey (2024-2025)
- Kenzo Marmorat (2024)
- Marco Barnfield (2023-2024)
- Pablo Graf (2023-2024)
- Konstantin Nomerotski (2023-2024)
- Barnabas Balega (2023-2024)
- Cari Lloyd (2023-2024)
- Julien Astier (2022-2023)
- Charlie Cook (2022-2023)
- Siqi Yu (2022-2023)
- Henry Allman (2023)
- Krystof Chrappova (2023)
- Zoe Crome (2021-2022)
- Joshua Sims (2021-2022)
- Oscar Thickpenny (2020-2021)
- Luke Moore (2020-2021)
- Alexander Moore (2020-2021)
- Kacper Patej (2021)
- Joe Cooper (2019-2020)
- Angus Nicolson (2018-2019)
Visiting Scientists
- Dr Davide Accomasso (2021)
- Dr María Eugenia Sandoval-Salinas (2019)
In Silico Photochemistry Group 