News

October 2025:

• We have welcomed two MChem project students to the group for this academic year; Georges Child and Nidhi Vaidyanath. Georges will be working on modeling the catalytic mechanism for a Buchwald-Hartwig amination reaction and Nidhi is working with Dr Uli Hintermair to understand a Ru(PNN) catalysed ester hydrogenation.

        

April 2025:

• The group attended Dalton 2025 at Warwick University and were lucky enough to hear our own Mike (Hill) and Kyle (Pearce) give talks on "Molecular Redox Reactivity of s-block Elements" and "Zinc-Mediated Divergent Transmetallation from a β-diketiminato Calcium Hydride" respectively.

      

March 2025:

• We finally managed to escape the office / lab for a brief lunch and a catch-up with the Hill group this month.

  

  Left to right; Jacob Guntley, Dr Agustin Morales Aguilar, Dr Claire M^cMullin, Prof. Mike Hill, Dr Louis Morris, Dr Kyle Pearce and Dr Rex Charman.

February 2025:

• Dr Agustin Morales Aguilar has joined the McMullin group as a PDRA, filling the EPSRC funded post vacated by Dr Sam Neale. Agustin hails from Spain and completed his joint synthetic and computational PhD in the groups of Dr Bontemps (LCC, France) and Prof. Lledós (UAB, Spain). Find out more about Agustin here.

  

October 2024:

• We welcome Jacob and Becca to the McMullin group. Jacob will be completing his PhD studies with Claire looking at main group reaction systems, find out more about him here. Rebecca is joining as an MChem student and will be working on a joint project with Dr David Liptrot.

        

  We also have said goodbye to Dr Sam Neale, who has left Academia to start a new career in Data Science - thanks for all your contributions Sam and all the best with new job role.

September 2024:

• Claire traveled to Limburg an der Lahn in Germany for the Beilstein Organic Chemistry Symposium: Main Group Chemistry for Modern Catalysis and Synthesis. She presented her recent collaborative work with Prof. Mike Hill, her talk was titled "Tetrametallic s-Block Compounds: Investigating the Redox Chemistry of Sodium Supported Dimagnesium Species".

  Beilstein Conference Photo	Kyle and Marina make it to Limburg after inter-railing from Bath!	Claire starts her presention	Claire mid-presentation

June 2024:

• Claire has been promoted to Senior Lecturer.

April 2024:

• Claire delivered one of the keynote lectures at the RSC Main Group Meeting held in Birmingham. Her talk was titled: "s-Block Metals: Supporting Ions or Active Participants?".

             

January 2024:

• Sadly, Gareth's time with us in Bath has come to an end and he has returned back to the Hicks Group in Australia.

  

  Alex, Sam, Gareth, Ed, Jon and Kyle in Kingsmead Street Bottle Shop

September 2023:

• Welcome Gareth Nelmes to the group for a few months. Gareth is a visiting postgraduate student from Australia, who has been working on synthetic projects with Dr Jamie Hicks at ANU (Australian National University).

  

  Gareth Nelmes

June 2023:

• Welcome Grace and Atro to the group for the summer, as they work with Claire on her RSC Enablement Grant project; "Improving Computational Models for Anions in Solution".

  

  Grace Sparrow

May 2023:

• Claire's recent collaboration with Alexandre Gagnon from the University of Quebec in Montreal is on the cover of ChemPlusChem! Their recent publication is on copper-catalyzed Barton C3-arylation of indoles using triarylbismuth bis(trifluoroacetates). Click the embedded links to find out more about the paper and the cover.

April 2023:

• Claire has returned from her maternity leave. Thanks to Dr Sam Neale for taking on her maternity cover role whilst she was away. She is very glad to be back, and this happily coincides with the start of a new EPSRC grant (EP/X01181X/1) in collaboration with Prof. Mike Hill (University of Bath) and Dr Emma Richards (Cardiff University). The title of the project is "Molecular s-block Assemblies for Redox-active Bond Activation and Catalysis: Repurposing the s-block as 3d-elements". We also welcome back both Dr Kyle Pearce (Synthesis) and Dr Sam Neale (Computational) as Post-Doctoral Research Associates on the grant!

October 2022:

• Claire answered some questions for SCI as part of their series on Careers for Chemistry Post Docs by their SCI Young Chemist's Panel. She discusses her career path so far (click here).

  

August 2022:

• Claire has been translated! She is now a Lecturer on a Teaching and Research contract. Thanks to everyone for their support in achieving this.

July 2022:

• Claire is taking a break for a few months, as she welcomes her second child. Well, it's being described as a break in the loosest of ways... she fully expects to be more tired! She is still monitoring her email inbox.

• Sam has been out and about attending conferences this summer and presenting our recent research on the Mg₂Na₂ redox structures from the Hill group at both WATOC 2022 in Vancouver, Cananda and ICOMC 2022 in Prague, Czech Republic.

April 2022:

• Congratulations to Sam Neale who won best talk at the 3rd Bath Chemistry Researcher Symposium on Friday 22nd April. Sam's talk was on Computational Studies of CO Activation by Group 1 and 2 Heterobimetallic Complexes. He is pictured below receiving his certificate from Dr Ruth Webster.

  

January 2022:

• It's been a busy start to 2022 for the M^cMullin group, three new papers are now available:

  Isocyanate Deoxygenation by a Molecular Magnesium Silanide Dalton Trans.

  Rubidium and caesium aluminyls: synthesis, structures and reactivity in C–H bond activation of benzene Chem. Commun.

  On the reactivity of Al-group 11 (Cu, Ag, Au) bonds Dalton Trans.

October 2021:

• Check out our new paper with the Hill group in JACS, featuring Reductive Dimerization of CO by a Na/Mg(I) Diamide:

  

August 2021:

• Check out our new paper with the Coles group in Angewandte Chemie, featuring Dihydrogen Activation by Lithium- and Sodium-Aluminyls:

  

February 2021:

• A big welcome to Dr Sam Neale, who is joining the Nucleophilic Boryl project as a computational post-doctoral research associate to carry on work that Nasir started. We look forward to giving him a proper tour of the campus and Bath once lockdown restrictions have eased.

• Check out our new paper published in Chem. Commun. with Martyn Coles and his group at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand - on double CO₂ insertion to a Al-Te multiple bond. Link to paper is: here.

Janaury 2021:

• Nasir has started a new job with MoA Technology. We are sad to see him leave the group, but thank him for all his hard work and wish him well on the next stage of his career.

July 2020:

• Claire has been named the RSC's Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms Group's Young Investigator of 2020.

May 2020:

• The Chemistry Undergraduate DoT and DoSs team has won the University Teaching Award (2020) for Best Team in Support of Student Learning. The Team consists of the Director of Teaching (Prof. Matthew Jones) and three Directors of Studies (Dr Mary Mahon, Dr Gan Shermer and Dr Claire McMullin). For more information about the 2020 awards or shortlisted candidates click the links.

• And like British buses, another Angewandte paper is now available on line! This time showcasing the great results Anne-Fred has from her time in Mike Hill's lab - capturing a novel [BO₂]^- anion from a Bpin group. Read the paper here.

• A new collaboration with Martyn Coles and Mat Anker, both at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, sees a new paper in Angewandte Chemie, showcasing some of Nasir's calculations on their interesting Aluminimum system that can form a new carbon-carbon bond. Watch this space for more papers with our Kiwi friends in the future!

October 2019:

• Another Chemical Communications paper with the Hill group on Calcium Stannyl Formation by Organostannane Dehydrogenation is now available. Check it out online here.

August 2019:

• Claire attended ViCEPHEC - the UK's "Variety in Chemical Education / Physics Higher Education Conference" at the University of Bristol, presenting a talk on "Establishing a Fourth Core Strand of Chemistry: Computational". Thanks to Gan for taking the photo!

  

June 2019:

• A lovely way to end June for us - Claire, Nasir and Jem have published in Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry a computational C-H activation study on Ru(II) catalysts in acetonitrile. Check it out online here.

May 2019:

• A very busy month for publications - three new articles from the M^cMullin group are now online;

  C-H activation under kinetic and thermodynamic control with Rh and Ir catalysts J. Am. Chem. Soc.

  Diborane heterolysis with an outer SN2 mechanism: adding imines to [Mg](nBuBpin2) Chem. Sci.

  C-H activation under kinetic and thermodynamic control with Ru catalysts Faraday Discuss.

April 2019:

• Claire has a new role in the Department of Chemistry - she is Year 1 Director of Studies.

January 2019:

• First publication of the year, a joint University of Bath project with Simon Lewis, Petra Cameron and Tony James. The paper is on pentafluorosulfanyl substituted azulene molecules, is published by the New Journal of Chemistry, and available here.

October 2018:

• A big welcome to Nasir, who joins us here in Bath, having previously worked alongside Claire at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh as a PhD student for Stuart Macgregor. Nasir will be working on our EPSRC grant with both the Hill and Cresswell groups at Bath, looking into Nucleophilic Alkaline Earth Boryls.

August 2018:

• A new paper in collaboration with the Hill group is available online in Organometallics.

November 2017:

• It's been a busy month for publications, three new papers are now online! Check out my newest C-H activation or Mg-Boryl papers both in Angewandte, and fluoride sensors in Chem. Comm.

July 2017:

• Claire is back from maternity leave! Check out some of her new publications on the tab above, including some interesting boron chemistry with Mike Hill and more C-H activation with Christ Frost.

June 2017:

• Our long awaited Chemical Review on "Computational Studies of Carboxylate-Assisted C-H Activation and Functionalization at Group 8-10 Transition Metal Centers" is out now! (Written with Stuart Macgregor and Dai Davies)

October 2016:

• Claire has gone on maternity leave.

July 2016:

• A new C-H activation paper using a Ru catalyst has been published, collaborating with the Frost and Williams groups here at Bath, check it out here.

September 2015:

• Claire has started her new role as Computational Chemistry Teaching Fellow at the University of Bath.

June 2015

• Claire and Dave Johnson attended OMCOS 18 (Organometallic Chemistry directed towards Organic Synthesis) in Sitges-Barcelona. Claire was selected from 160 abstracts to present her work on Ru(II)-direct arylation in front of the over 800 strong audience.

          

• The group headed over to the University of Strathclyde for ScotCHEM 2015. Claire presented her recent research on the mechanism of Ru(II) direct arylation.

April 2015

• Claire, Dave J., Tobi, Nick, Emma and Vera travelled to the Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms Discussion group at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. Claire gave her talk on kinetic modelling of C-I activation with a Ru(II) hydride-phosphine complex:

  

March 2015

• Stuart, Claire and Vera travelled to ICIQ in Tarragona, Spain, for the EU-cost action meeting on small molecule activation. Claire gave a talk in the computational interest group on kinetic modelling of C-I activation with a Ru(II) hydride-phosphine complex from work that Dave McKay did in collaboration with Vlad Grushin. Here are two photos taken during her presentation:

          

January 2015

• On Friday 23rd January the C-H Activationers (Stuart, Claire and Kevin) headed to the University of Leicester for a one-day symposium on catalytic C-H functionalization. Our team helped organise the event with our collaborators at the University of Leicester, which was attended by 90 chemists from academia and industry. Stuart also presented some of our collaboration's most recent results. Photos from the event can be seen here.

  

July 2014

• Claire and Stuart Macgregor headed to the University of Rennes for the second international symposium on C-H activation (ISCHA), where they met up with their collaborators from Leicester; Dai, Barbara and Charlie.

          

April 2014

• The Macgregor group headed en masse to Warwick for the Dalton Special Interest Meeting. Both Dave M. and Claire gave presentations of their recent work.

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