Supramolecular Chemistry in Biomedical Imaging

Thorfinnur (Thorri) Gunnlaugsson was born in Iceland, where he received his early education in his home town of Hafnarfjoer?ur, before obtaining a B.Sc. in Chemistry from University of Iceland (UI). During his studies at UI he visited the laboratory of Professor A. P. de Silva at Queen's University of Belfast (Northern Ireland), as a research summer student and became fascinated by the world of supramolecular photochemistry, under the magic supervision of 'A.P.'. After receiving a Ph.D. from Queen's University in 1996, under A.P.'s direction, he joined the research group of Professor David Parker at University of Durham (England) as a postdoctoral fellow. Under the guidance of David the world of coordination chemistry and lanthanide luminescence was explored and the excitement continued! He was appointed as the Kinerton (IPSEN) Lecturer in Medicinal Organic Chemistry at the School of Chemistry, University of Dublin, Trinity College, in October 1998 and a Lecturer in Organic Chemistry in 2000. He was made a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2003. In October 2004 he was appointed as an Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the same department and in 2008 a personal chair and Professor in Chemistry. He was a Visiting Professor at Faculty of Science and Technology- School of Life and Environmental Sciences. Deakin University, Victoria, Australia in 2005. In 2008 he was a visiting Professor in Bordeaux I CNRS in 2008.


Steve Faulkner grew up in the Lake District near Keswick, then did his first and second degrees at The Queen's College, Oxford (1986-93) before moving to take up the Addison Wheeler Fellowship at the University of Durham (1993-98) and thence to a Lectureship in Chemistry at the University of Surrey. In 2001, he moved to the University of Manchester, where he was successively Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and, from 2005, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry. He arrived at the Chemical Research Laboratory and Keble College in 2008.


Gearoid O Maille completed his Ph.D. at The University of Dublin, Trinity College, where he focused on the synthesis and spectroscopy of extended aromatic platforms and their metal complexes. In 2013 he was awarded an Irish Research Council Elevate fellowship in order to work with Prof. Stephen Faulkner (The University of Oxford) and Prof. Thorri Gunnlaugsson (TCD) on a cross-institutional project encompassing lanthanide spectroscopy, diagnostic imaging and supramolecular chemistry. In 2018 he moved to the Universitaet Bern, Switzerland, where he studies the properties and varied catalytic application of metal complexes bearing non-innocent ligands.