Professor Joe Sweeney, University of Reading, UK

Joe Sweeney obtained his first degree from Imperial College, London in 1984, where he was elected an Associate of the Royal College of Science.

Joe completed his D.Phil. in 1987, having worked with Prof. J. Baldwin, FRS, at the University of Oxford. He then held the position of Royal Society Fellow at ETH in Zurich between 1987 – 1989 in the laboratories of Prof S.A.Benner.

In 1989, Joe took the position of Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at the University of Leicester and then moved to the University of Bristol where he remained for 5 years. In 1996 he became a Reader in Bio-Organic Chemistry at the University of Reading where he resides today as Professor of Synthesis and Chemical Biology.

As well as heterocyclic chemistry, Joe’s other research interests are organometallic chemistry, total synthesis, asymmetric synthesis, protein-small molecule interactions and cancer chemotherapy; he is current Royal Society Industry Fellow, 2007-9.