Creator & Editor

Hi, I’m Steve, a medicinal chemist and the creator of Synthesis Spotlight.

I’m currently a Senior Scientist at BioAscent Discovery, where I design, synthesise and optimise small molecules across early-stage drug discovery programmes.

My background spans post-doctoral research with Prof. Andrew L. Lawrence at the University of Edinburgh, where I worked on enantioconvergent catalysis and biomimetic [1,2]-shift processes, and doctoral and post-doctoral work with Prof. Varinder K. Aggarwal at the University of Bristol, focusing on complex natural product synthesis and strained boronate chemistry.

I hold a First-Class Master’s degree in Chemistry with Drug Discovery from the University of Strathclyde and completed a one-year medicinal chemistry internship at F. Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, Switzerland.

My work has been published in leading journals including Nature Chemistry and JACS, and I’ve contributed to award-winning synthesis teams—winning the 8th SCI–RSC National Retrosynthesis Competition and leading the winning team in Merck’s inaugural Compound Synthesis Challenge.

I started Synthesis Spotlight after moving from academia into industry, when I found it increasingly difficult to stay on top of the literature. The newsletter grew from that need and now reaches 2,500+ subscribers worldwide, helping readers stay up to date with the most recent advances in synthetic organic chemistry.