OUR TEAM
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Dr Amanda K Pearce
Amanda joined the Department of Chemistry as a Lecturer in September 2022. Her research is highly interdisciplinary, focusing on the synthesis and application of fluorescent polymer nanoparticles in a range of healthcare applications. She also acts as an advocate for science engagement with underrepresented groups in the community.
Amanda completed her Honour’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Queensland, where she stayed to obtain her PhD in 2015, under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Kristofer Thurecht and Prof. Andrew Whittaker, focusing on the synthesis of targeted, drug-loaded hyperbranched polymers via RAFT polymerisation for in vivo prostate cancer applications.
She then moved to the University of Nottingham, UK in 2016 as a Research Fellow working with Prof. Cameron Alexander in an EPSRC Biomaterials Discovery Programme Grant to further her research on the design, synthesis, and characterisation of novel synthetic polymers for cancer drug delivery. In 2019, Amanda was promoted to Group Leader with Prof. Rachel O’Reilly at the University of Birmingham, where she was the lead researcher of the polymers and self-assembly subgroup, where she worked on projects using fluorescence lifetime as a tool to monitor particle self-assembly and biological behaviours.
PhD Students
Emma Cooper
Emma has recently joined the Pearce group at Loughborough University in October 2023, focusing on the synthesis of polymeric nanoparticles and subsequent analysis and characterization of the protein corona. She has recently completed her MChem at Warwick University within the Gibson Group with a thesis entitled the ‘Characterization of ice-nucleating macromolecules produced by pollen and fern spores by enzymatic degradation’.
Email: e.cooper@lboro.ac.uk
Chathumalee Manchanayaka-Arachchige-Dona
Chathu was born in Sri Lanka and completed her BSc in chemistry at the University of Ruhuna Sri Lanka before moving to the UK for her MSc in Chemistry at Nottingham Trent University. Her MSc project was supervised by Dr Warren Cross working on the synthesis of novel photo switchable molecules. During her placement year, she worked in the Biomolecular Material Interface Research group under Prof Carole Perry, focusing on the synthesis of photo-switchable biomaterials from fungi. Chathu has recently joined the Pearce group at Loughborough University in January 2024, working on the synthesis of fluorescent polymer sensors for bacteria detection, co-supervised by Dr Stephen Butler.
Previous Group Members
Sophie Baxter (MChem, 2022-23)
Katrina Cranfield (MSc, 2023)