I’m Samuel Neale, a Postdoctoral Research Associate working in the McMullin group and in collaboration with the Hill group at the University of Bath.

Research Profile

My research interests lie in the understanding of the electronic structure and reactivity of transition metal and main group complexes through DFT and wavefunction methods, typically working in close collaboration with experimentalists to tackle novel and challenging research problems.

During my PhD with Professor Stuart A. Macgregor my research focussed on unravelling the mechanisms and unusual electronic structures of intermediates in iron-catalysed hydrogenation and cobalt-catalysed C-H functionalization, supplemented with side-projects centred on the reactivity of persistent carbenes and phosphirenium cations.

During my previous postdoctoral research role in the Van Speybroeck group at Ghent University I pursued a line of research in transition metal catalysis hosted in zeolites, where periodic DFT methods are employed to study the reaction mechanisms at hand.

Currently I am working on unravelling the mechanisms and structures within alkaline earth metal-assisted borylation of electrophiles and unusual metal alumanyl complexes.