Chemistry Research MPhil/PhD

Key information

Award:

MPhil

PhD

Study mode:

Full time

Part time

Duration:

3-4 years

The Department of Chemistry occupies research laboratories Britannia House on Guy’s Campus, with state-of-the art analytical and spectroscopic facilities close at hand and further analytical and synthetic facilities at the Waterloo and St Thomas’ Hospital campuses.

Chemistry research spans the Faculties of Natural & Mathematical Sciences, and Life Sciences & Medicine, and broadly ranges from computational and physical chemistry to chemical biology, medical imaging and materials science. Additional strengths are in analytical chemistry and spectroscopy, metallochemistry, nanoparticle chemistry and biology and drug discovery.

Chemistry is also a major component in a number of prestigious Centres based at King’s such as the Cancer Research UK/EPSRC Cancer Imaging Centre, Wellcome/EPSRC Medical Engineering Centre, and BHF Centre of Excellence.

Key information

Current number of academic staff: 15 academic staff and a number of affiliate academic staff across the College.

Head of group: Prof Martin Ulmschneider

Students are encouraged to begin their research in October so as to attend the introductory courses, but students can also register at a further three registration points during the academic cycle (January, April and July).

Recent publications

Cytochrome P450–catalyzed L-tryptophan nitration in thaxtomin phytotoxin biosynthesis
Dynamics of a bacterial multidrug ABC transporter in the inward- and outward-facing conformations
Dopamine receptor D3 regulates endocytic sorting by a Prazosin-sensitive interaction with the coatomer COPI
Stabilization of a Protein Nano-cage through the Plugging of a Protein-Protein Interfacial Water Pocket
Preferred Conformers of Proteinogenic Glutamic Acid

Current research areas

For information about the exciting research in the chemistry department please see our research pages: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/chemistry/research

Partner organisations

King's Health Partners, including Guy’s and St Thomas', King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts; Crick Institute.

For funding opportunities please explore these pages:

UK Tuition Fees 2022/23

Full-time tuition fees: £6,120 per year

Part-time tuition fees: £3,060 per year

International Tuition Fees 2022/23

Full-time tuition fees: £26,640 per year

Part-time tuition fees: £13,320 per year

UK Tuition Fees 2023/24

Full-time tuition fees: £6,540 per year

Part-time tuition fees: £3,270 per year

International Tuition Fees 2023/24

Full-time tuition fees: £28,260 per year

Part-time tuition fees: £14,130 per year

These tuition fees may be subject to additional increases in subsequent years of study, in line with King's terms and conditions.

Research in the Department of Chemistry is based in Britannia House (a pharmaceutical industry grade research facility). In addition to labs equipped for synthetic chemistry, biochemistry and tissue culture, individual research groups have specialist kit (e.g. laser excitation and microwave spectroscopy) as well as access to King’s excellent core research facilities:

Centre of Excellence for Mass Spectrometry
Centre for Biomolecular Spectroscopy
Nikon Imaging Centre
NMR Facility
Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry/Mass Spectrometry (LC/MS/MS)
Radiochemistry facilities and medical imaging

Postgraduate students are encouraged to mix with other scientists, both fellow students and beyond, at events varying from Departmental seminars to international conferences. These offer you the chance to present and discuss your work at many levels make valuable network connections.

The nature of the research in the Department of Chemistry is highly cross-disciplinary and making contacts and exchanging ideas form a core part of this approach to science.

Research projects may be co-supervised by staff from different Research Divisions and Departments to support collaboration and application of chemical innovation especially in medicine and biology.

Aldous Group

Research at the Aldous Group focuses on thermoelectrochemistry and biomass utilisation.

Barry Group

Our research focuses on understanding and exploiting the natural product biosynthesis, from the conditions under which biosynthetic pathways are expressed to elucidating the mechanisms of the enzymes involved, in pursuit of novel compounds and biocatalysts.

Booth Group

The Booth group works at the interface of Chemistry and Biology to elucidate the mechanisms by which proteins fold, assemble and communicate within biological membranes.

Borysik Group

The Borysik group use native mass spectrometry (MS) ion mobility MS and hydrogen-deuterium exchange MS to study the conformations and dynamics of important biomolecules in order to understand their function.

Brogan Group

Research in the Brogan Group aims to develop new enzyme-based biotechnologies to help us move to a more sustainable, renewable, economy.

Cobb Group

The Cobb Group has developed a number of new asymmetric reactions, mainly focusing on the chemistry of the nitro or sulfone groups.

Diez-Perez Group

Find out about research in the Diez-Perez Group.

Eggert Group

The Eggert Group uses chemical and cell biology approaches to study cytokinesis at the process, pathway, protein and metabolite levels.

Hogarth Group

Graeme Hogarth is an inorganic chemist with a broad range of interests focused on molecular transition metal chemistry.

Isaacson Group

The Isaacson group uses biophysical techniques, with a focus on NMR spectroscopy, to determine macromolecular structure and interactions of molecules relevant to health and disease.

Müller Group

Research in the Müller lab focuses on using synthetic protein chemistry to elucidate how proteins are controlled by post-translational modifications.

Musgrave Group

The Musgrave Group looks into Metallopolymers and Metal-Metal Bonding

Reading Group

Eamonn Reading's group focuses on understanding structure-dynamics-function relationships of membrane proteins

Sanz Group

The Sanz group looks at how biomolecular conformation plays a fundamental role in biological processes such as molecular recognition.

Ulmschneider Group

The Ulmschneider group studies how peptides and proteins interact with cellular membranes and carry out their biological functions.

Wallace Group

The Wallace Group builds artificial mimics of cell membranes; both to improve our understanding of membrane biology, and to engineer new devices inspired by biology.