News - The Todd Group

2025

July 31st 2025 Yinuo passed her PhD Viva with minor corrections. Congrats Dr. Wang!

2024

Dec 11th 2024 We head to the British Museum for the Silk Roads exhibition, then to the pub for a Science Jeopardy quiz.
Nov 5th 2024 Mat hosted an SGC-Industry event at the Wellcome Trust on the potential future impact of AI and machine learning on drug discovery, written up here.
Sept 19th 2024 Eve Carter featured in an article from the Structural Genomics Consortium celebrating Postdoc Appreciation Week.
Sept 11th 2024 Congratulations to the group's cohort of MSc Drug Discovery and Pharma Management students (Xin, Annabella, Ulfa, Ryan, Natnaree and Marc) on their successful presentations and the end of their course! Good luck to them with whatever is next!
Sept 5th 2024 Eve, Gui, Kangping, and Yinuo enjoyed presenting their work at the XXVIII EFMC International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC-ISMC 2024), hosted in Rome, Italy.
Sept 2nd 2024 Mat features in a Chemistry World article entitled "Will Open Science Change Chemistry?".
August 28th 2024 Hadia presented her research at the GP2A 32nd annual conference hosted by the University of Coimbra.
August 20th 2024 Hadia presented her research at the PDRA Symposium at UCL Chemistry.
July 31st 2024 Wellington's supervisor from Unicamp, Brazil, Prof Carlos Roque Duarte Correia, dropped by to say hello and see the lab.
July 24th 2024 As part of his project, Mohsen has been spending time with the SGC in Toronto. Here he is running an SPR using Biacore T200 to see if his compounds have a binder against a plasmodium WDR.
July 20th 2024 Eve presented her research at the Gordon Research Seminar on Mammalian Reproduction in Barcelona.
July 8th 2024 In line with our strong commitment to sustainability, we are pleased to announce that we have received the LEAF Bronze Award. Learn more about the UCL LEAF programme here.
July 6th 2024 Yinuo had a fantastic time at the ULLA Summer School 2024 in Leiden University — Shaping the Future of Drug Research: From Design to Therapy! It was an amazing week of talks and a great opportunity to network with a diverse range of PhD students from 10 different universities.
June 28th 2024 We say farewell to our visitor from the State University of Campinas, Wellington Da Silva, who has been working on marinoquinolines as part of Open Source Malaria. Wellington is going back to ace his PhD in Brazil and hopefully we'll see him again.
June 3rd 2024 Yinuo has been awarded from the UCL FLS Conference Fund to present her research at the XXVIII EFMC International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry in September.
May 21st 2024 Today we said farewell to BVGH Fellow Evans Mainsah, and look forward to visiting him in his home town of Buea, Cameroon, where he is seeking new medicines for the treatment of river blindness (onchocerciasis).

2023

Oct 26th 2023 An Open Science Award. The MycetOS drug discovery project, founded by Mat, was awarded the Open Research prize by the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. The project uses open-source research methods to find new potential treatments for the neglected tropical disease, mycetoma, without secrecy or patents. Contributors to the project include Mat's PhD student Dmitrij Melechov, staff at Erasmus University and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative and many others, such as the UK school children who have made new candidate molecules and, most recently, a cohort of our very own MSc Drug Discovery students in the School of Pharmacy in 2023.
Summer 2023 Group Social Hyde and Holland Park trip.
July 2023 Group Lunch Summer group lunch gathering.
Early 2023 Farewell Daniel Silva Leaving Do - Daniel and Mat.
Feb 11th 2023 Event Women in Science Day 2023 celebration.
Jan 2023 Group Lunch Toddlers New Year Lunch.

2022

June 7th 2022 Mat contributed to a report on open data sharing practices during the COVID pandemic, that was published today by Wellcome, UKRI and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
May 20th 2022 The group receives about £2M from the National Institutes of Health as part of a $63M award to an antiviral drug discovery centre, READDI-AViDD, based at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Mat's group will work on the medicinal chemistry of multiple projects and will share all findings publicly in real time, in line with the group's open science principles. The aim is to work together to improve our pandemic preparedness. UCL news item
Mar 28th 2022 Mat is awarded £10,000 from the Rosetrees Trust following a successful application for funding led by the open science non-profit, Ersilia.io. The project will allow iterative design-synthesis-test cycles for the leading project in Open Source Malaria, where new potential antimalarials will be designed using Ersilia's AI/ML methods and evaluated in blood stage potency assays.
Mar 28th 2022 Mat is awarded $250K from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Structural Genomics Consortium as part of an $5M consortium aimed at finding new non-hormonal female contraceptives. This major open science initiative, running for three years, will have project champions across UCL, Toronto, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Frankfurt, McGill and Karolinska. The UCL team's job is to find potent, selective, cell-penetrant inhibitors of phospholipase C zeta 1, an under-explored target central to human fertilisation. Science details
Mar 15th 2022 The group's research is mentioned in the Financial Times' article "Will ‘open-source’ vaccines narrow the inequality gap exposed by Covid?".
Feb 14th 2022 Mat wins £35,604 from the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account/Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Funding scheme to run an AI/ML open science challenge to find new starting points for antibiotics. With Brooks Paige (Turing Institute) and Peter Coveney (Chemistry), a protein target is being provided, and AI/ML researchers who use "generative" methods for molecule generation can predict compounds that will bind that protein. Mat's lab will make or buy the molecules, which will be evaluated at the University of Warwick, with all data being shared in real time. You can find details here
Feb 3rd 2022 Tom and Mat featured in a Chemistry World article about the Sir James Murray Student Champion concept.

2020

Mar 26th 2020 Mat is named in the Medicine Maker 2020 Power List.
Feb 11th 2020 Mat co-founds the company M4ID Pharma, with a mission to develop medicines for infectious disease using open science.
Feb 10th 2020 Congratulations to Edwin as he submits his corrected PhD thesis, to become Dr Tse.

2019

Dec 6th 2019 Open Source Malaria's computational modelling competition (funded by the AI3SD network) attracts a winning entry from the private sector firms Optibrium and Intellegens.
Nov 27th 2019 Mat talks at the Innovation Lecture hosted by UCL's Institute of Brand and Innovation Law, entitled "Patents vs Open Innovation: Incentivising 'Medicines for the Many'" hosted by Sir Robin Jacob and The Hon. Mr Justice Birss.
Sept 24th 2019 Mat is mentioned in the new Labour Party policy document "Medicines for the Many" as an example of new approaches to the development of affordable medicines.
June 25th 2019 With Sevenoaks school we're awarded a Royal Society partnership grant to work open source on new medicines for mycetoma, a fungal infection for which there are no drugs. The research will involve 6th-form school students generating new molecules. If it works, we can use the project as a guide for others. See also Breaking Good.
Mar 22nd 2019 Edwin's review on the past, present and future of anti-malarial medicines is published.
Jan 18th 2019 Mat delivers TedX talk entitled "Can Openness Pay?", detailing the possible use of regulatory data exclusivity to help fund open source drug discovery.

2018

Aug 8th 2018 Congratulations to Edwin for being selected as one of the three Sydney University Chemical Society Le Fevre Lecturers for 2018.
Jan 23rd 2018 Mat delivers a keynote on open drug discovery at linux.con.au in Sydney.

2017

Nov 2017 Mat joins Expert Advisory Committee of the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY database malaria project.
Oct 19th 2017 Yu Heng's work on the coordinating ability of cyclam scorpionands is finally published.
Aug 31st 2017 Mat, Alice, the Sydney Grammar School students and Open Source Malaria are featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (US only Youtube video).
June 22nd 2017 Mat interviewed for Beilstein TV on whether the chemistry community is embracing open science and open data.
June 21st 2017 Althea Tsang's paper on the mechanism of CDC reactions finally comes out.
May 4th 2017 Mat is one of 100 people named on the Medicine Maker Power List 2017, as a Champion of Change, for his work on Open Source Malaria.
Apr 19th 2017 Paper published that describes a roadmap for open source pharma, with an associated explainer in the Guardian.
Feb 8th 2017 The collaboration between Sydney Grammar School and Open Source Malaria is featured in Teacher Magazine.

2016

Dec 1 2016 Alice Williamson and Mat win the Jury Prize of the Hitachi Innovation Award with a pitch on "Breaking Good" - how to involve students and the public in the synthesis of much-needed medicines.
Nov 30th 2016 Sydney Grammar School completes the synthesis of Daraprim using Open Source Malaria's platform. The story goes viral.
Sept 14th 2016 The first Open Source Malaria paper is published.
June 2nd 2016 Open Source Malaria featured in the Newsletter of the Australian Society for Parasitology.
May 13th 2016 Mat's work on schistosomiasis, Open Source Malaria and the Open Source Pharma Foundation featured in both The Lancet and Nature.

2015

Nov 17th 2015 Mat wins in the Malaria Innovator category of the Social Media Awards (Article, interview and even artwork).
Oct 30th 2015 The Open Source Malaria consortium is featured in Share, the newsletter of the Australian National Data Service.
Oct 28th 2015 Mat delivers one of the NSW Chief Scientist's Breakfast Seminars on Openness Boosts Research (Slides).
Oct 23rd 2015 Mat writes about openness vs. secrecy in drug development as part of a series on this topic at PLoS Blogs.
Oct 20th 2015 The fantastic work of Erin Sheridan and the boys at Sydney Grammar as part of the Open Source Malaria consortium is featured in the school's winter newsletter (p36). You can read their research reports directly, too.
Oct 1st 2015 Mat is part of a team of four awarded $3M by the Tata Trusts to create the Open Source Pharma Foundation. Here is the press release and articles: 1, 2, 3. The aspect of prizes as part of OSP is picked up by the Economist.
Sept 2015 Mat helps create and then run the Second Open Source Pharma Conference in Marburg, Germany. The meeting's To Do list is available. An article about the meeting from one of the participants sparks a lengthy debate on the merits of OSP at Derek Lowe's blog and further debate on Eric Raymond's blog.
July 31st 2015 Alice Williamson leads a team that includes Mat in a successful application for a University of Sydney Small Educational Innovation Grant on Open Research in the Undergraduate Laboratory, following Alice's pilot of this idea.
July 7th 2015 The group is awarded a 3-year ARC Linkage Grant (LP150101226) with the Medicines for Malaria Venture and Kiaran Kirk to use the Open Source Malaria platform to make new compounds that will reveal the details of an important antimalarial target, PfATP4.
June 29th 2015: Alice Williamson writes about open science and the OSM consortium in a piece for ABC Science.
May 22nd 2015 Mat interviewed in Future Medicinal Chemistry about the use of open source research models, and is part of an Ask the Experts panel on Rethinking the Drug Discovery Model in neglected tropical diseases. These articles were part of an open access special issue on schistosomiasis.
May 20th 2015 Mat talks on "The Six Principles of Open Source Drug Discovery" and chairs a panel session on "Open Source: Models for Collaboration" at the ISNTD-D3 meeting at the Wellcome Trust in London.
Apr 30th 2015 OSM's introductory video comes an honorable 7th in the Thinkable Open Innovation competition - well done to the winners.
Mar 7th 2015 Alice Williamson is one of the winners of the ABC's Top 5 Under 40 competition! Here's a video she made in the competition. She now gets to make a full radio show on a subject of her choosing.

2014

Sept 26th 2014 Article on Open Source Malaria (OSM) appears in the School of Chemistry's Newsletter, ChemNews.
Sept 18th 2014 Mat interviewed on Canadian and US Radio about Open Source Pharma and Ebola.
Sept 18th 2014 Invited talk and associated discussion at the RSC Faraday Discussions meeting on Physical Chemistry of Functionalised Biomedical Nanoparticles, Bristol UK.
Aug 22nd 2014 Mat speaks on how to do science openly at the Open Science, Open Issues conference in Rio.
July 16-18 2014 Mat co-organises the first Open Source Pharma conference that takes place at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Centre on Lake Como, Italy. The meeting creates a set of principles for Medicine for All.
June 26th 2014 The Open Source Malaria project is featured in the newsletter of the Australian National Data Service.

2013

Oct 31st 2013 Mat speaks about open data and open access at the Open Access Research conference at QUT, Brisbane.
Oct 21st 2013 The Open Source Malaria Consortium wins one of three $30K Google/PLoS/Wellcome Trust ASAP awards. Webcast from the World Bank (award is from 1:08 in). Background video. Picked up in The Conversation, by MMV. Interview at PLoS Blogs. Bill Gates tweets about the project.
Sept 26th 2013 Mat runs conference session on "Is Open Source Drug Discovery Practical?" at WHO, Geneva, addressing, among other things, whether patents are necessary in drug discovery.
Sept 11th 2013 Mat interviewed by MMV about open drug discovery.
May 17th 2013 Mat talks about open source drug discovery at the 2013 GoldLab Symposium in Boulder, Colorado.
May 15th 2013 Mat is quoted in an article in The Atlantic on "de-linking" drug R&D from the cost of medicines.
May 10th 2013 Mat talks at Sydney Uni about the group's use of the electronic lab notebook Labtrove.
May 1st 2013 The OSDD Malaria project is mentioned as one of the top innovations worldwide in malaria by The Guardian newspaper.
Apr 22nd 2013 Congratulations to Nilupa as she hands in her corrected PhD thesis, to become Dr Amarasinghe.
Apr 18th 2013 Congratulations to Mingfeng as he hands in his corrected PhD thesis, to become Dr Yu.
Mar 28th 2013 Mat's piece about open access and open science comes out in The Conversation in response to number of Nature articles on the subject.
Feb 15th 2013 Congratulations to new Honours student Kat Badiola for winning a University of Sydney Academic Merit Prize.
Jan 30th 2013 Congratulations to Althea on submitting her PhD thesis.
Jan 30th 2013 The OSDDMalaria team is featured in an article on crowdsourcing in the RSC's Chemistry World magazine.
Jan 25th 2013 Mat is interviewed in the Nature Chemistry blog The Sceptical Chymist.
Jan 17th 2013 Mat publishes an opinion piece on open access on the ABC News site, The Drum.

2012

Nov 7th 2012 The group's open source research featured on SciDev.Net in a story on science networks. This follows an earlier story covering the case study (below) analysing The Synaptic Leap's achievements.
Sept 20th 2012 Study published comparing The Synaptic Leap and Indian OSDD Projects.
Sept 20th 2012 Open letter to the new CEO of the Australian Research Council about the value of open data is published in The Conversation with a link to the Google Doc that can be signed. Please feel free to add your name. Stephen Matchett comments on it in The Australian.
Sept 19th 2012 Mat delivers keynote about open source drug discovery at the 1st Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki.
Sept 13th 2012 Interview with Mat on open science published by the Results for Development Institute.
Aug 31 2012 Congratulations to Mingfeng, Nilupa and Soo for submitting their PhD theses.
May 4th 2012 Mat presents some of the group's research at the University of Sydney Integration in Biology and Medicine Conference.
May 3rd 2012 Althea is awarded a RJW Le Fevre Research Travelling Scholarship from the School of Chemistry to present her research at an overseas conference later this year.
Feb 24th 2012 We play host to the first Open Source Drug Discovery for Malaria meeting. An account of the meeting is here, and the current playlist of talks is here. A Sydney Uni news feature on the meeting is here and here.
Feb 18th 2012 Mat talks at a session on "Innovating Innovation" at the AAAS meeting in Vancouver.
Jan 27th 2012 Mat's blog post on open access is republished on the LSE blog.

2011

Nov 23rd 2011 Mat wins a NSW Science and Engineering Award in the "Emerging Research" category for open science. Story is here and here.
Nov 1st 2011 Two Australian Research Council grants awarded. ARC Discovery (DP120104035): Charting Intercellular Space, M. H. Todd, P. J. Rutledge and P. J. Smith ($348K) and ARC Linkage (LP120100552): Open Source Drug Discovery for Malaria, M. H. Todd and T. N. C. Wells ($320K).
Oct 28th 2011 Mat talks at Sydney University's Open Access Week - recording here and on Youtube.
Oct 20th 2011 Mat's article entitled "We eat what we are – let's detoxify the word 'chemical'" appears in The Conversation.
Septr 23rd 2011 Our second open science paper is published, describing how Open Science is a Research Accelerator.
Sept 21st 2011 Our first open science paper is published, on the Resolution of Praziquantel.
Aug 19th 2011 Ahamed submits his corrected PhD thesis today, and we welcome two new postdocs to the group, Paul Ylioja and Murray Robertson.
Apr 8th 2011 Mat talks about the future of web-based chemical collaboration at the Cyberchemistry meeting at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Washington State.
Feb 21st 2011 Congratulations to Swapnil on his award of a Henry Bertie and Florence Mabel Gritton Research Scholarship. Drinks are on him...
Feb 15th 2011 A new industry-sponsored PhD position in medicinal chemistry is available. If you're interested, please contact Mat. Only Australian residents are eligible for this opening.
Feb 15th 2011 The awesome and long-awaited Treasure Hunt paper comes out in J. Chem. Ed. - this turns a campus map into a play area for a Chemistry-themed treasure hunt.
Jan 27th 2011 Mat is named as one of the University's top 10 lecturers for 2010 in a nationwide poll.

2010

Nov 3rd 2010 Congratulations to Ahamed for being selected as one of the three Sydney University Chemical Society Le Fevre Lecturers for 2010.
Oct 6th 2010 Mat talks about open science and electronic lab notebooks at USyd's eResearch showcase.
Sept 23rd 2010 Yu Heng's first paper is accepted into Chem. Eur. J. and he's off to start his PhD with Dave Spring. Paper available here.
Sept 20th 2010 Ahamed, Thiru and lots of other peoples' paper on how dihydroisoquinoline reacts with nitromethane is published.
Sept 6th 2010 Ahamed's review on catalytic asymmetric additions of C-nucleophiles to N-heterocycles is published.
Aug 6th 2010 Mat speaks on Open Science at Ignite Sydney. Mat's talk's currently the most watched from the night.
June 2010 Our lab's open science approach featured in Chemistry in Australia.
May 11th 2010 Mat is awarded a Citation for Excellence in Teaching from the Faculty of Science at The University of Sydney.
Apr 6th 2010 Mat talks about open science at Google. The talk is picked up here.
Feb 4th 2010 Our open science project is the subject of a feature article in Nature.