Dr Richard P. Matthews holding a hockey stick outdoors

Dr Richard Matthews

Senior Lecturer in Physical and Computational Chemistry

Senior Lecturer

Physical and Computational Chemistry

Department of Bioscience , School of Health Sport and Bioscience

I am currently a lecturer in physical and computational chemistry. Before joining UEL, I was a Daphne Jackson Research Fellow at Imperial College London (Chemical Engineering). This fellowship was undertaken after a four-year break from the research environment and was preceded by a PhD in computational chemistry under Prof Kevin Naidoo in the Scientific Computing Research Unit, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a four-year research associate position with Profs Patricia Hunt and Tom Welton OBE at Imperial College London (Chemistry).

Qualifications

  • BSc (Hons) Chemistry, University of Pretoria; BSc (Industrial Chemistry), University of Pretoria
  • MSc – Chemistry (2007) University of Cape Town
  • PhD – Chemistry (2010) University of Cape Town
  • Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry
  • Member of the South African Chemical Institute

Areas Of Interest

  • Density Functional Theory
  • Non-covalent interactions
  • Ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents
  • Predictors of acidity and thermal stability of protic and aprotic ionic liquids for biomass application
  • Protein stabilisation in aqueous and non-aqueous environments
  • Bio-based ionogels
  • Organozinc complexes
Dr Richard P. Matthews holding a hockey stick outdoors

OVERVIEW

I am motivated by a broad interest in research aimed at developing computational methods to understand the structure and properties of novel solvents (aprotic and protic ionic liquids, and deep eutectic solvents) and their application in materials science and biology (disordered proteins, protein engineering and the biophysics of proteins in non-aqueous environments).

Current research in my group focuses on:

  • Predictors of acidity and thermal stability of protic and aprotic ionic liquids
  • Interaction of novel ionic liquids with proteins, antibodies and in bio-based ionogels.

CURRENT RESEARCH

My research spans the application of multi-level computational simulations to identify and investigate molecular-level interactions that direct structure-property relationships and explain chemical processes in materials and biological systems. I have applied this approach to a broad range of chemical systems, including proteins in aqueous and non-aqueous environments, ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents, ionogels and electrolyte solutions.

I have published over 20 high-quality research papers, have been cited over 1800 times and have an h-index of 14. I have extensive experience in high-performance computing and I am an expert in a range of methods, including quantum chemical methods (MP2, DFT and TD-DFT), classical and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations and free energy methods.

Most recent research

  1. Exploiting chemical structure and water content to affect the acidity of protic ionic liquids.
  2. Development of stimuli-responsive ionogels for drug delivery.
  3. Application of ionic liquids to inhibit the propensity for protein aggregation.

Research centres/groups

  • Molecular Simulation Research Group

External roles

  • Academic Visitor – Imperial College London (Chemical Engineering)

MODULES

Modules taught

  • BS4101 – Essential Chemistry
  • BS4110 – Fundamentals of Physical Chemistry
  • BS5116 – Topics in Physical Chemistry
  • BS6112 – Physical, Theoretical and Computational Chemistry
  • BS5108 – Environmental Chemistry

PUBLICATIONS

Visit the UEL research repository to view a full list of publications.

Publications

Browse past publications by year.

Full publications list

Visit the research repository to view a full list of publications

Research repository

Teaching