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Discover our students' research 

Interested in postgraduate study with The Open University's STEM faculty, or maybe you just love science? Discover some of the fascinating research our PhD students in School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences have been doing in these explainer articles.

Dr Sarah Allman, Lecturer in Chemistry

I took up my current position as a lecturer in Chemistry with The Open University in March 2014 following post-doctoral study at the Oxford Glycobiology Institute (Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford)

My research interests are based upon the synthesis, structural characterisation and elucidation of function of biologically relevant carbohydrates.

Dr Nick Chatterton, Lecturer, Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics

I graduated from Cambridge University with an MA in Natural Sciences, this was then followed by an MSc in Chemistry at Imperial College and a PhD in Organometallic Chemistry from Kings College London in 2003. Since then I have further done research in inorganic chemistry in France (CEA, Grenoble), been a teaching fellow at Sheffield University and prior to joining the OU in June 2015 was a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry and Course Leader in Pharmaceutical Sciences at London Metropolitan University for 8 years. I am also an associate editor for the journal RSC Advances. 

Dr Simon Collinson, Lecturer in Chemistry

My PhD concerned ‘Bioinorganic chemistry mimicking copper metalloenzymes’ with Professor David Fenton at the University of Sheffield and was sponsored by BP Chemicals. This developed dicopper complexes of macrocylic Schiff base ligands.

I then worked at the University of Kansas as a postdoctoral fellow developing ‘Metal catalysts for bleach activation’ with Professor Daryle Busch and the Proctor & Gamble Company which led to several patents and publications. 

I returned to the UK in 1998, working at the University of Exeter  as a postdoctoral fellow studying ‘Metal containing liquid crystals’ with Professor Duncan Bruce.  In 2000 I continued at the University of Exeter as a postdoctoral fellow developing ‘Electrochemical sensors for biological molecules’ with Dr Jim Tucker.

In 2001 I was appointed at the University of Nottingham as a temporary lecturer and subsequently teaching fellow in Inorganic Chemistry.

In 2009 I moved to Cranfield University as a lecturer in Environmental and Waste Chemistry. 

I joined the Open University in November 2011 as a Teaching Fellow in Chemistry and an Associate Lecturer on the level 3 Metals and Life course. In march 2014 I was promoted to be a lecturer in Chemistry. My research interests include chemical education, materials chemistry, biological inorganic chemistry, catalysis, environmental and sustainable chemistry.

Dr Rachel McMullan, Lecturer in Health Sciences

I completed my PhD in Biosciences at The University of Birmingham in 2003, studying the role of Rho small GTPases in keratinocyte function. Following this I undertook a postdoc at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology investigating the function of Rho family small GTPases during neurotransmitter release in Caenorhabditis elegans.

In 2010 I became a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow at Imperial College using C. elegans to study the relationships between the nervous and immune systems the mediate responses to infection. 

I joined the School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences in 2015 as a lecturer.

1999: BSc Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology The University of Birmingham 

2003: PhD Biosciences The University of Birmingham 

Prof. Peter Taylor, Professor of Organic Chemistry

Peter Taylor did his BSc and PhD many years ago at the University of East Anglia. This was followed by a brief spell (1976-78) as a postdoctoral Researcher at Exeter. He joined the Department of Chemistry at the Open University in 1978 and has stayed at the OU ever since. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1993 and to Professor of Organic Chemistry in 2005.

He has been research active throughout this time and has always had at least one student and/or Post Doc for the last 35 years. At present he has one Ph. D. student and two Post Doctoral Fellows. In recent years he has been more interested in working with industry and has had 3 KTPs and a CASE award.

Peter has been involved in the production and presentation of a large number of courses within and without the Science Faculty.  However, in recent years he has spent most of his time in a more senior University role. He was the academic lead on the Academic Principles for Qualifications project. He is Deputy Chair of the Academic Quality and Governance Committee and the Module Results Approval and Qualification Classification Panel and chairs numerous committees and projects around assessment issues, for example he is the academic Director of the Assessment programme.  He is Director of the Open Programme which has over 25 000 students. He is an Associate Lecturer of the project module S810.

In the recent past he has had funding from Wellcome and NESTA for outreach projects around Open University Science broadcasting. Aty present he is one of the Academic leads on the radio series "Inside Science"

Peter is a past chair of the Travel Grants Committee of the Royal Society of Chemistry and was chair of an American Chemical Society named award Committee. He has recently finished a 4 year Tempus project (900 000 euros) on developing e-learning capacity in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Peter is a Principal Fellow of the HEA