Dr. Alan Armstrong

Biography

Alan Armstrong is an Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Investigator at the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London. His core expertise lies in synthetic organic chemistry, particularly catalysis, organocatalysis, and stereocontrolled synthesis. He has extensive experience in the synthesis of biologically active compounds and the development of new methods for drug discovery, utilizing novel technologies for the discovery of covalent electrophilic fragments that bind selectively to therapeutically relevant proteins. Armstrong obtained his BSc and PhD degrees from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London, where he worked on the total synthesis of milbemycin and avermectin natural products under the supervision of Professor Steve Ley FRS. He was a SERC/NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University from 1990 to 1992, collaborating with Professor Clark on designing novel podand ionophores for enantioselective cation binding. He returned to the UK in September 1992 to take up a Lectureship in Organic Chemistry at the University of Bath and later moved to the University of Nottingham. In 1999, he rejoined Imperial College as a Reader in Organic Synthesis and was promoted to Professor in 2004. He held a Royal Society Industry Fellowship with Pfizer Neusentis from 2011-2015, focusing on developing synthetic biology tools to aid drug discovery. Armstrong served as the Head of the Department of Chemistry from 2014 to 2019, overseeing the planning and move to the new Molecular Sciences Research Hub on the White City campus. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to organic chemistry and teaching excellence.

Research Interests