Summary
Dr Ravi Singh is a teaching fellow (lecturer) in organic chemistry. He is an academic tutor at both first and second year, alongside teaching responsibilities in workshops and laboratories across the undergraduate chemistry degree programmes. He also supervises BSc projects at third year. A full list of teaching responsibilities can be found on the 'Teaching' tab. Ravi also helps with departmental outreach activities throughout the year.
In November 2022, Dr Singh was awarded a Royal Society of Chemistry Education prize. This was a Horizon Prize in Education for creating practical experiments and activities that aimed to prepare students for research in organic synthesis. This work was published in the Journal of Chemical Education where theory was linked to experimental design.
Prior to lecturing, he held a position as research associate/lab manager at the Molecular Sciences Research Hub (White City campus) in the group of Professor Ed Tate. In addition he was the course manager for the MRes in Drug Discovery and Development (DDD) course which also involved directly supervising several students on research projects, and teaching/assessing at postgraduate and undergraduate levels.
Ravi obtained his degree in Medicinal Chemistry (MChem, BSc) from the University of Leeds, with his MChem research project focusing on disrupting protein-protein interactions implicated in cancer (using a combination of small molecules and constrained peptides). Ravi then remained at the University of Leeds to complete an interdisciplinary PhD with the Department of Chemistry, Leeds Institute of Cardiology and Metabolic Medicine (LICAMM), and The Astbury Centre for Structural and Molecular Biology. This research project aimed to identify and optimize novel small molecules against a confidential target implicated in thrombosis by combining in silico modelling, organic synthesis, and biochemical testing. Ravi then initiated an NMR fragment screening process to generate hits for a new series against the biological target of interest.
Dr Singh also has a strong interest in Chemical Education. During his PhD, he designed and developed online tools which were used in undergraduate lectures and then published in the Journal of Chemical Education. Ravi also blended his PhD research with the undergraduate teaching laboratories by creating a series of workshops. This allowed students to apply their theoretical knowledge in a ‘real world’ setting in a classroom-based activity, which resulted in another publication in the Journal of Chemical Education and led to the RSC Horizon Prize in Education. Ravi was awarded his Associate Fellowship of the Advance HE in August 2018 and was invited to speak at ViCEPhEC 2018 held at the University of Sheffield. In 2022, Ravi was awarded his Fellowship from Advance HE.
Research interests: organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry, chemical education, computational modelling, protein-ligand NMR, fragment-based drug discovery, chemical biology.
Publications
Journals
Haque M, Flack T, Singh R, et al., 2023, Aromatic oligoesters as novel helix mimetic scaffolds, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry, Vol:87, ISSN:0968-0896
Kennedy C, Goya Grocin A, Kovacic T, et al., 2021, A probe for NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitor MCC950 identifies carbonic anhydrase 2 as a novel target, Acs Chemical Biology, Vol:16, ISSN:1554-8929, Pages:982-990
Singh R, Li Z, Foster R, et al., 2021, A Classroom-Based Activity to Teach Students How to Apply Organic Chemistry Theory to Design Experiments, Journal of Chemical Education, Vol:98, ISSN:0021-9584, Pages:515-520
Mistry N, Singh R, Ridley J, 2020, A Web-Based Stereochemistry Tool to Improve Students' Ability to Draw Newman Projections and Chair Conformations and Assign <i>R</i>/<i>S</i> Labels, Journal of Chemical Education, Vol:97, ISSN:0021-9584, Pages:1157-1161