Rate My Professor Adrian Dobbs

Professor Adrian Dobbs is Professor of Organic Chemistry and Head of the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of Surrey. He earned a BSc with First Class Honours in Chemistry in 1992 and a PhD in 1996 from King's College London. His doctoral work, supervised by Professor Keith Jones and sponsored by SmithKline Beecham, centered on the development of heteroaryl radicals in synthesis. Dobbs held a Royal Society European Research Exchange Fellowship for postdoctoral research from 1996 to 1998 with Professor Istvan Markó at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, focusing on the total synthesis of okadaic acid. He subsequently joined the process development group at GlaxoSmithKline in Tonbridge, Kent. In 1999, he took up his first academic post at The Open University, followed by a move to the University of Exeter, where he began independent research and assumed various departmental administrative roles. Appointed Senior Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at Queen Mary University of London in 2005, he also served as Senior Admissions Tutor and managed industrial placements. In January 2013, he became Chair of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Greenwich and Head of the newly formed School of Science from 2018 to 2022. He assumed his current role at the University of Surrey in March 2022.

Dobbs' research philosophy emphasizes developing new synthetic methodologies for the total synthesis and analogue production of complex natural products to explore biological pathways and disease mechanisms. Current efforts concentrate on asymmetric synthesis of heterocyclic systems via Lewis acid-mediated reactions of organosilicon compounds, organofluorine chemistry, and radical cyclisation reactions. These methodologies have facilitated total syntheses of biologically active molecules including (+)- and (-)-solenopsin A, (±)-epi-dihydropinidine, racemic and enantiomerically pure civet, (±)-ritalin, and the first syntheses of (+)- and (-)-irciniasulfonic acid. Funding from EPSRC, the EU, GSK, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and the June Hancock Mesothelioma Research Fund supports interdisciplinary projects, such as steroid-based compounds probing oestrogen and glucocorticoid receptors, nitro-containing anti-parasitic heteroaromatics, and the anti-mesothelioma agent JBIR-23. Dobbs has spoken at public engagement events on asbestos dangers and lung cancers. He holds AKC, CChem, and FRSC qualifications, with awards including the University Alliance 'Professionals Prize' (2021), RSC Inspirational Member Prize and Award (2015), Samuel Smiles Prize (1991), and Style Silver Medal (1991). Key publications are 'Oxidative Photochemical Cyclisations to Access Spiroketals' (2024), 'Double Prins Cyclisation Enabled Rapid Access to α,ω-Bishydroxylated Ketones' (2022), 'Donor cyclopropanes in synthesis: utilising silylmethylcyclopropanes to prepare 2,5-disubstituted tetrahydrofurans' (2011), 'The silyl–Prins reaction: a novel method for the synthesis of dihydropyrans' (2002), and 'First Total Synthesis of the Irciniasulfonic Acids' (2005).