Dr. James Bull

Biography

James Bull is a Professor of Synthetic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London. His research focuses on the development of efficient synthetic catalytic methods to access novel structural motifs, particularly heterocycles, with an interest in drug discovery. Professor Bull graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2001 with a Class Honours MSci degree in Natural Sciences, specializing in Chemistry and receiving the Raphael Prize for Organic Chemistry. He spent a year working as a research scientist in the Medicinal Chemistry Department at GlaxoSmithKline in Stevenage. Subsequently, he returned to Cambridge in 2003 to undertake PhD research with Professor Steven V Ley, completing the total synthesis of bisoxazole antifungal natural product bengazole analogues. In 2007, he joined Professor André B. Charette's group at Université de Montréal, Canada, where he developed the intramolecular Simmons-Smith cyclopropanation reaction. In 2009, he began independent research at Imperial College London as a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellow, working alongside Professor Alan Armstrong. From 2011 to 2015, he held an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship focusing on innovative strategies for accessing chiral heterocycles as potential lead compounds for drug discovery. Professor Bull has been awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship from 2016 to 2023 and was promoted to full professor in 2024. His accolades include the RSC/BMOS Young Investigator Award in 2015, the Eli Lilly OIDD Award for Outstanding Contribution to Compound Screening in 2015, the Thieme Chemistry Journal Award in 2016, the AstraZeneca Prize for Synthetic Chemistry in 2021, and the Journal of Organic Chemistry Outstanding Publication of the Year Award in 2024.

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