The Chilton Group

Prof. Nicholas F. Chilton - Professor of Computational and Theoretical Chemistry, Royal Society University Research Fellow
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Prof. Chilton obtained his BSc Adv Hons from Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) in 2011, with an Honours project under the supervision of Prof. Keith Murray, and his PhD from The University of Manchester in 2015 under the supervision of Prof. Richard Winpenny and Prof. Eric McInnes. He was a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellow from 2016-2018, a UoM Presidential Fellow from 2018-2019 and is currently a Royal Society University Research Fellow (2019-). In 2015 he won the Dalton Young Researchers Award and in 2021 he won a Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize, both from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and in 2019 he won the 7^th Olivier Kahn International Award from the European Institute for Molecular Magnetism. His group is currently funded by the ERC, The Royal Society, and The Leverhulme Trust.

Dr Gemma Gransbury - PDRA (2020 - )
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Dr Gransbury undertook her undergraduate and Honours degrees at the University of Adelaide in 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Hugh Harris. Her PhD was completed at the University of Melbourne in 2019 under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Colette Boskovic and Assoc. Prof. Alessandro Soncini, and she was the recipient of the Don Stranks Award by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute for her work in 2016. Her PhD involved a computational and experimental investigation of valence tautomerism and exchange interactions in cobalt-dioxolene complexes. She continued to investigate the parameters controlling one- and two-step valence tautomerism in dinuclear systems as a Research Assistant in the Boskovic group in 2019. In 2020, she moved from Australia to Manchester to take up a Postdoctoral Research Associate position with Dr David Mills, in close collaboration with the Chilton group, conducting CASSCF calculations, EPR and magnetometry measurements on f-element complexes with precise geometries.

Dr William Blackmore - PDRA (2020 - )
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Dr Blackmore obtained his undergraduate degree from Lancaster University in 2013, which included a study year abroad based at UNC Charlotte, USA. Following this, he completed a PhD in Physics at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Dr Paul Goddard studying magneto-structural correlations in low-dimensional quantum magnets. His research interests lie in understanding the relationship between composition, structure and magnetic properties of quantum magnets, and using this to study novel phenomena afforded by low-dimensional quantum systems. After two short postdoctoral positions at Warwick (the first developing a UV sensor for use in autonomous vehicles with Dr Gavin Bell, and the second a continuation of his PhD work with Dr Goddard), he joined the Chilton group working on the experimental arm of the ERC project "ContraVib: Chemical Control of Vibronic Coupling for Magnetic Materials". His work focuses on studying how phonons affect the magnetic relaxation in single-molecule magnets and molecular qubits.

Dr Andrea Mattioni - PDRA (2020 - )
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Dr Mattioni graduated in Physics at the University of Trieste, Italy, in 2013. During his MSc, he started working on coherent vibronic dynamics of photosynthetic complexes under the supervision of Dr Francesca Fassioli. In 2016, he moved to the group of Prof Martin Plenio at Ulm University, Germany, to pursue a PhD in Physics. His PhD focused on clarifying the mechanisms behind efficient energy transfer in biological and bio-inspired light-harvesting nanostructures, borrowing tools from the theory of open quantum systems. In 2020, after completing his thesis, Andrea moved to Manchester to join the Chilton group as a postdoc. Here, in collaboration with the group of Dr Ahsan Nazir in Physics, he is applying similar theoretical tools to investigate the interplay between molecular vibrations and magnetisation dynamics in single-molecule magnets, as part of the ERC project ContraVib.

Dr Meagan Oakley - PDRA and NSERC Fellow (2022 - )
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Dr Oakley earned her BSc (Hons) in chemistry at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, where she quantified noncovalent interactions of host-guest systems under the supervision of Dr Jason Pearson. Her studies in computational chemistry continued at the University of Alberta where she earned her PhD in 2019 under the supervision of Dr Mariusz Klobukowski where she focused mainly on computing high-energy excited states of small organic molecules. As a postdoctoral researcher, Meagan worked under Dr Laura Gaglardi at the University of Minnesota, USA, and Dr Georg Schreckenbach at University of Manitoba, Canada, where she honed her skills in multireference methods and actinide chemistry. In 2022, Meagan joined the Chilton group as a postdoc to explore spin dynamics in actinide molecules.

Dr Benjamin Atkinson - PDRA (2022 - )
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Dr Atkinson obtained his undergraduate degree at The University of Oxford. His fourth year research project, supervised by Prof. Stuart Mackenzie, studied the structure and reactivity of bimetallic complexes. Ben then completed his PhD at The University of Manchester, supervised by Prof. Nikolas Kaltsoyannis. His PhD studied the electronic structure of uranium-containing molecules, mostly focussing on novel uranium-nitrogen bonding using both DFT and multiconfigurational methods. After finishing his PhD in 2020, Ben joined the Research IT team at Manchester, helping to support and develop high-performance computing services. He is now a PDRA in the Chilton group looking at developing code for spin dynamics in the solid state, incorporating higher-quality electronic structure methods.

Dr Nicolaj Kofod - PDRA (2022 - )
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Nicolaj hails from Copenhagen, where he completed his PhD with Prof. Thomas Just Sørensen. At the University of Copenhagen, he worked with lanthanide photophysics and the correlation between optical properties and molecular structures of lanthanide complexes. In 2023, after finishing his PhD, he was awarded an Internationalisation Fellowship from the Carlsberg Foundation to move from wet and grey Copenhagen to equally wet and grey Manchester to work as a postdoc in the Chilton group. Here, he will combine spectroscopy with computations to develop a methodology to determine the molecular solution structure of f-block complexes.

Michael Godsall - PhD student (2019 - )
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Michael is a PhD student in the Chilton group, who did his 4^th year MChem project in the Chilton group in collaboration with Prof. Eric McInnes looking at the paramagnetic NMR spectra of lanthanide molecules. After a couple of years away from research, he was drawn back, as if by magnetic force. He is now a PhD student in the group, developing first-principles methods for the calculation of emission spectra of actinide molecules.

Barak Alnami - PhD student (2020 - )
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Barak is a PhD student in the Chilton group. He graduated from Kuwait University with a first class B.Sc. degree, before undertaking his M.Sc. at The University of Manchester. His project was under the supervision of Dr Sam Hay, involving a computational study of the enzymatic activity of the prenylated flavin cofactor towards Diels-Alder cycloaddition using DFT. His PhD project is focused on using molecular dynamics and CASSCF methods to study paramagnetic MRI contrast agents their solvent dependence.

Yasmin Whyatt - PhD student (2020 - )
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Yasmin obtained a first class MChem degree from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her 3^rd and 4^th year MChem projects, supervised by Dr Stuart Langley, focused on the design and characterisation of highly axial dysprosium(III) single-molecule magnets. Yasmin's PhD project involves using spectroscopic techniques to gain insight into how vibrational modes affect magnetic relaxation.

Jakob Staab - PhD student (2020 - )
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Jakob obtained his Bachelor's degrees in Chemistry and Biomolecular Engineering from the Technische Universität Darmstadt in 2018. He then moved to Sweden to undertake his Master's degree in Theoretical Chemistry at Uppsala University. He carried out his degree project in Roland Lindh's group, where he worked on the implementation of solvent effects in electronic structure calculations using average solvent potential embedding. The aim of his PhD project in the Chilton group is the development of theoretical approaches to predict magnetic relaxation from ab initio calculations.

Reece Marsden - PhD student (2022 - )
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Reece completed his 4^th year MChem project in the Chilton group studying exchange interactions in a series of f-block dimetallics using EPR simulations. Now a PhD student in the group, his project aims to improve current methods of modelling EPR spectra and involves the implementation of deflation algorithms into PHI.

William Morrillo - PhD student (2022 - )
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Will completed his MChem at the University of Liverpool in 2022. His 3^rd and 4^th year projects were supervised by Dr Matthew Dyer, where he focussed on calculating the structure and voltage of potassium-ion battery cathode materials. His PhD project involves examining the possibility of electric field control of single molecule magnets and qubits.

Edward Latham - PhD student (2023 - )
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Ed completed his MPhys at Lancaster University in 2022. His 4^th year project employed machine learning techniques to study particle collisions at the LHC to examine CP Parity of the Higgs Boson. His PhD project will look into optical initialisation methods for molecular qubits.

Toby Thompson - PhD student (2023 - )
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Toby completed his MChem at Durham University in 2023, using molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the phase behavior of liquid crystals under the supervision of Prof. Mark Wilson. His PhD project is focused on studying the dynamics of lanthanide contrast agents in solution to understand their paramagnetic NMR shifts.

Alumni

PDRA: Dr Michele Vonci (2016-2019), Dr Daniel Reta (2016-2021), Dr Marcus Giansiracusa (2019-2021), Dr Adam Woodward (2021-2022), Dr Jon Kragskow (2022)

PhD: Dr Marcus Giansiracusa (2016-2019), Dr Jon Kragskow (2018-2022), Dr Letitia Birnoschi (2018-2022)

MSc: Christina Vlachou-Portari (2018/2019), Xinchao Feng (2021), Zheji Wang (2022), Zihan Zhang (2023)

MChem: Carys Williams (2015/2016), Michael Godsall (2016/2017), Ismaeel Ramzan (2016/2017), Jon Kragskow (2017/2018), Nyamedo Addae-Dapaah (2018/2019), Julia Evans and Felix Hall (2019/2020), Alannah Crockatt and Lily Eresen (2020/2021), Egor Zaytsev and Reece Marsden (2021/2022), Kholil Rahman (2022/2023)

Visitors: Emil Damgaard-Møller (Copenhagen, 2017), Ming-Yee Tsang (Oxford, 2019), Kunal Kumar (Tokyo, 2020), Leander Held (Berkeley, 2022), Chen Shen (Oxford, 2023)