People

Principal Investigator – Prof Christian Nielsen

Christian received his PhD from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark in 2004. He has since held academic and industrial research positions in the US and the UK.  He joined Queen Mary University of London in 2016 as a Materials Research Institute Fellow. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2019, to Reader in 2022, and since 2024, he is Professor of Materials Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry within the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences.

Profile on Google Scholar

Postdoctoral Research Assistant – Dr Kalidass Kollimalaian

Kalidass is from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. He earned his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), where he focused on the synthesis and characterization of carbazole-based conjugated materials. In 2025, he joined the Nielsen Research Group as a Postdoctoral Research Associate on a Leverhulme-funded project. His current research explores the design of topological defects in functional graphene for organic electronic applications.

4th Year PhD Student – Dilara Güntürkün

Dilara was born in Istanbul, Türkiye. She received her BSc degree both in Chemistry and Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, and her MSc in Chemistry from Istanbul Technical University. During her MSc studies, she mainly focused on the synthesis and characterization of thiophene-based conjugated materials. In 2022, she joined the Nielsen Research Group as a PhD student. Currently, she is working on new conjugated polymers and polymerisation processes for organic bioelectronic applications.

4th Year PhD Student – Rebecca Peake

3rd Year PhD Student – Victoria Williams

Victoria is from the UK. She received her integrated Master’s degree (MChem) at the University of Bath. During this time, she spent a year abroad in Canada at Dalhousie University undertaking research in the synthesis of fully-conjugated fluorescent materials for bioimaging applications. Her previous work also involves investigation into chirality transfer from chiral substituents to large, extended pi-systems. Victoria joined Queen Mary in 2023 on a co-supervised project working in both the Nielsen and Livingston lab, with research focussing on the synthesis of sequence-defined pi-conjugated materials for organic electronics.

1st Year PhD Student – Leila Pooriakia

Leila is from Tehran, Iran and completed her MSci Chemistry degree at Queen Mary University of London. Her third-year project focused on aqueous processing of organic solar cells, while her final-year research investigated ion-responsive polymers for bioelectronic applications. She was awarded the Excellence Through Adversity Award (2023) and the D.C. Bradley Prize for Project Work in Inorganic/Materials Chemistry (2025). Leila began her PhD in the Nielsen group in 2025, where her research focuses on the design and synthesis of new n-type conjugated polymers.

Past Group Members

Deepak Kumar (PhD visiting fellow 10/2024-09/2025)
Simiao Yu (PhD 10/2020-12/2024; Postdoc 02/2025-08/2025)
William Neal (MSc 2018-2019; PhD 10/2019-03/2024)
Veronica Flores (MRes 2022-2023)
Roman Halaksa (PhD 03/2020-07/2023; Postdoc 04/2023-09/2023)
Raymundo Marcial Hernandez (Postdoc 08/2021-08/2023)
Mohammod Uddin (BSc 2022-2023)
Zeeshan Abid (PhD visiting IRSIP fellow 06/2022-12/2022)
Christina Kousseff (PhD 10/2017-11/2021; Postdoc 09/2021-12/2022)
Sofia Giacalone (MSc 2021-2022)
Catherine Cox (UG internship 2022)
Rikin Shah (BSc 2021-2022)
Efrem Tesfay (BSc 2021-2022)
Asad Moalin (BSc 2021-2022)
Thénina Oulouna (MSc internship 2021)
Matthew Rayner (RSC Undergraduate Research Bursary 2021)
Peter Finn (PhD 10/2017-03/2021; Postdoc 03/2021-07/2021)
Birannavi Thiyagarajah (MSci 2020-2021)
Simran Sohal (BSc 2020-2021)
Zachary Parr (PhD 10/2016-07/2020; Postdoc 08/2020-12/2020)
Wenxi Huang (MSc 2019-2020)
Philisha Reid-Kanon (MSci 2019-2020)
Muhammad Marouf (MSci 2019-2020)
Hannah Wood (BSc 2019-2020)
Josh Kiddey (BSc 2019-2020)
Lorena Alonso Marañón (Postdoc 09/2018-10/2019)
Jorge Borges González (Postdoc 01/2018-08/2019)
Frini Taifakou (MRes (Distinction) 2018-2019)
Yasser Zaffar (MSci 2018-2019)
Meng Wang (Postdoc 09/2017-11/2018)
Hussain Thoha (MSci 2017-2018)
Asha Hersi (MSci 2017-2018)
Benjamin Poggi (MSc internship 2017)
Ellasia Tan (MSci 2016-2017)
Folusho Balogun (MSci 2016-2017)