Our research concentrates on the development of new synthetic methodology as well as on target oriented organic synthesis, including total synthesis of natural products.  Of key importance in both areas is the need to develop new ways for the control of both relative and absolute stereochemistry. Whenever possible, we employ molecular modelling to help rationalise our results and aid prediction of the properties of new molecules.

Biographical details:  Alan Armstrong was born in Consett, Co. Durham, UK, in 1966. He obtained his BSc in Chemistry (1987) from Imperial College London. He stayed on at Imperial College to carry out work on the total synthesis of the milbemycin and avermectin natural products under the supervision of Professor Steve Ley FRS, obtaining his PhD in 1990. From 1990 to 1992 he was an SERC/NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University, New York, working with Professor Clark Still on the design and synthesis of novel podand ionophores for enantioselective cation binding. In September 1992, he returned to the UK to take up a Lectureship in Organic Chemistry at the University of Bath, moving on to the University of Nottingham in January 1996. He returned to the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College in September 1999 as Reader in Organic Synthesis and was promoted to Professor in October 2004. He is the recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry Meldola Medal and Prize for 1995 (1996); a GlaxoWellcome Award for Innovative Organic Chemistry (1996); a Pfizer Academic Award (1999); an AstraZeneca Research Award (1999); the Novartis Young Investigator Award (1999); a Bristol-Myers Squibb Young Investigator Award (2000-2003); the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday-Morgan Medal and Prize for 2002 (2003); and a Novartis Lectureship (2008-2009).