Rate My Professor Andrew Benniston

Professor Andrew Benniston is Professor of Photonic Energy Sciences and Head of the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Newcastle University. He graduated from the University of Warwick in 1984 with a first-class honours degree in chemistry and completed his PhD at the same university under Professor Peter Moore, focusing on the preparation and coordination chemistry of azamacrocycles. He then held a one-year Royal Society postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Jean-Pierre Sauvage's group in Strasbourg, France, followed by several years as a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Tony Harriman at the Center for Fast Kinetics Research in Austin, Texas. From 1994 to 2001, he served as a lecturer at the University of Glasgow. In 2001, Benniston joined the Department of Chemistry at Newcastle University, where he co-founded the Molecular Photonics Laboratory, and was promoted to professor in 2011.

Benniston's research centers on the design and synthesis of multi-component supermolecules for energy and electron transfer studies, with applications in photonic technologies such as real-time monitoring of physical processes in nano-environments, solid-state luminescence pressure-sensitive materials, photochromic materials, and fluorescence sensors for biological imaging. His work includes photochemistry of BODIPY derivatives, expanded acridinium dyes, pyrene dimers for triplet-triplet annihilation, fluorescent viscosity probes, reactive oxygen species detectors, porphyrin derivatives for hydrogen production, mimics of the oxygen evolving complex in photosystem II, and magnetic properties of manganese complexes. Awards include the Royal Society postdoctoral fellowship (1991), Royal Society of Chemistry JWT Jones Travel Fellowship (1996), and Royal Society Travel Grant (2010); he is FRSC and CChem. Key publications are 'Deducing the Conformational Space for an Octa-Proline Helix' (Chemical Science, 2024), 'Light-Harvesting Crystals Formed from BODIPY-Proline Biohybrid Conjugates' (Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 2022), 'Recent Advances in Photorelease Complexes for Therapeutic Applications' (Dalton Transactions, 2022), and 'Voltage-Induced Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging of a BODIPY Derivative' (Chemical Communications, 2021). His leadership and international collaborations have advanced molecular photonics and artificial photosynthesis.