Pharmaceutical Materials and Soft Matter Group

Our main achievements have been facilitated by several interdisciplinary and multi-institutional consortia.

These include EPRSC/Innovate UK funded GELENZ consortium focused on the new enzymatic routes in generating carbohydrate-based materials (Khimyak, in collaboration with Bath, Bristol and JIC), Marie Curie Industry-Academia Partnership (Morris), EU-funded IMODE interreg partnership (Qi, Fabian).  Other sources of funding include UKRI (EPSRC, BBSRC), industrial support (Qi, Saeed, Morris, Khimyak) and cross NRP pump-priming grants (Qi, Khimyak).  Wallace joined the cluster as a Research Fellow of Royal Commission of Exhibition of 1851 and developed innovative NMR chemical imaging methods.  

  • We have developed of novel formulation methodologies including advances in 3D printing (Saeed (EPSRC), Qi), amorphous pharmaceutical materials (Khimyak (EPSRC), Qi (ICS)), soft matter systems (Khimyak (EPSRC/Innovate UK), Round, Wallace), encapsulated solid form of pharmaceuticals (Khimyak, Fabian).
  • Advanced molecular level characterisation of pharmaceutical materials at different length and time scales based on the synergy of experimental and computational tools uncovered unprecedented level of detail in structure of polymer based materials (Khimyak, Qi (EU, ICS), Saeed (EPSRC)), co-crystals (Fabian, Khimyak, Round) and nanoscale systems (Morris, Round) and enabled predicting structure/properties in solid-state (Fabian, Khimyak).
  • We have developed novel NMR tool-kit for soft matter (EPSRC/Innovate UK), biomaterials (NRP grants), carbohydrate systems (Khimyak, Wallace, cross-NRP collaborations), pharmaceuticals based on the combined application of solution and solid-state methods (Khimyak, Wallace) as well as innovative chemical imaging methods (Wallace).
  • Novel pharmaceutical materials: polymer systems for tissue engineering (Saeed), nano-formulations (Morris), graphene based nanomaterials (Khimyak) and soft matter systems (Khimyak, Qi, Wallace).


This research group is led by Prof Yaroslav Khimyak