Meagan Oakley

PI / Group Leader

Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Research Fellow

• Previously an NSERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Manchester
• Postdocs at the University of Minnesota & University of Manitoba
• PhD at the University of Alberta
• Follow @meaganoakley on Bluesky

Lana Francis

PhD student

• PhD co-supervised with Michael Baker

• Lana completed her MChem at Cardiff University with a placement year abroad at the University of Florida. Both projects focused on benchmarking electronic structure theory methods. Her PhD project focuses on modelling X-ray spectra of actinides.

Fathima Thanha Thazhe Namboorikandy

PhD student

• PhD co-supervised with David Mills

• Fathima completed her Masters in Chemistry at the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, Kerala, India. Her master’s project focused on electronic structure studies of beryllium-group 13 heterobimetallic dimetallocenes. Her PhD project focuses on defining the electronic structures of (hetero)metallocene anions-He-MAn.

Ffion Jones

PhD student

• PhD co-supervised with Kath Morris, Tom Neill, Michael Baker, Nicolaj Kofod

• Ffion completed her MChem at the University of Manchester. Her research is focused on extended environment effects on simulating X-ray spectra of actinide dioxide compounds.

Maxime Grasser

Postdoctoral Researcher

• PDRA at UoM since 2023
• Previous postdocs at The University of Manchester with Prof. Nicholas F. Chilton (2024-2025) and at Nantes University with Dr Morgane Vacher (2025-2026).
• PhD in Theoretical Chemistry, at the University of Rennes with Prof. Boris Le Guennic (2020-2023).
• Maxime is undertaking a second postdoc at the University of Manchester to simulate X-ray spectra of actinide complexes. His main research focuses on developing and applying novel methods to study optical properties based on multiconfigurationnal electronic structure calculations. He is also interested in magnetic properties and dynamics.

Nicolaj Kofod

Postdoctoral Researcher

• Independent PDRA at UoM since 2023
• PhD in Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, 2023
• While not ~technically~ part of the Oakley Group, Nicolaj is working closely with Meagan on simulating optical spectra of lanthanides and uranyl. His research interests contains all things light and f-block elements. Currently, he is working on uranyl speciation for nuclear remediation and nuclear waste management.

Faith McLeish

MChem student

• Current MChem student

• The aim of Faith’s research is the statistical assignment of electronic transitions in X-ray absorption spectra

Pippin

Post-dog

• PhD (pretty happy dog)
• Pippin trained with Dr. Oakley for 4 years and gained expertise in sit, speak, and playing dead.
• Proficient in pip