Rate My Professor Nicholas Tomkinson

Professor Nicholas Tomkinson serves as a Professor in the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde's Faculty of Science. He earned his BSc in Chemistry in 1992 and his PhD in 1995 from the University of Sheffield, under the supervision of Dr. D. Neville Jones and Professor Jim Anderson. He conducted postdoctoral studies from 1996 to 1998 with Dr. Tim Willson at GlaxoSmithKline in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. In 1999, he was appointed to the academic staff at Cardiff University, where he held an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship from 2004 to 2009. He joined the University of Strathclyde in June 2011 in his current professorial role.

Professor Tomkinson's research specializes in the development of synthetic methodologies for bond construction, adhering to three key principles: reactions that proceed at room temperature, tolerance to moisture and air, and the use of bench-stable catalysts or reagents that can be prepared in three synthetic steps or fewer. His contributions span chemical biology, including the design of chemical probes for real-time Raman imaging, stimulated Raman scattering microscopy for drug discovery, and covalent targeting in proteins. Notable publications include "A chemical probe for prostate-specific membrane antigen for real-time Raman imaging of prostate cancer cells" in ACS Sensors (2026), "BET isoform selectivity through diverse linkers for bivalent inhibitors: GSK785, a BRD2/4-selective bivalent BET inhibitor" in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (2026), "Emerging applications of stimulated Raman scattering microscopy for medicinal chemistry and drug discovery" in Chemical Society Reviews (2025), and "Label-free screening of drug-induced liver injury using stimulated Raman scattering microscopy and spectral phasor analysis" in Analytical Chemistry (2024). He has led or co-investigated in 39 projects, including major initiatives like the BBSRC-funded analysis of S-acylation dynamics in cell physiology (2025-2030) and collaborations with GlaxoSmithKline. His work is highly cited, with over 6,130 citations on Google Scholar, influencing synthetic organic chemistry and interdisciplinary applications in biomedicine. Additionally, he has served as an external PhD examiner and hosted international visiting researchers.