Our Team
Principal Investigator - Neil Ayres Ph. D.
Prof. Neil Ayres
Dr. Neil Ayres received his Ph. D. training under Prof. David Haddleton at The University of Warwick, where his thesis was focused on surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization. After graduating in 2003 he worked as a post-doc for Prof. Charles McCormick at the University of Southern Mississippi, then Prof. William Brittain at the University of Akron, and also Prof. David Grainger at the University of Utah. He became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Cincinnati in 2008, and was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in 2014.
Graduate Students
Naomi Coutinho
Naomi graduated from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2020 with a BS in Chemistry. Her undergraduate research experience was in organic synthesis. Her current research is investigating preparing spherical polyHIPEs
Tucker McKenzie
Tucker graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2018 with a B.S. in chemistry and focused on polymer synthesis for his undergraduate research. He is now working on how surfactant chemistry can control polyHIPE materials properties.
VINDYA DIKELLA
Anthony Smith
Tony completed his bachelor’s in Chemistry at the University of Cincinnati in 2020. He studied Diels-Alder and enolate chemistry in Prof. James Mack’s group during his undergrad. In the Ayres group he exploring how nanoparticles can interact with polyHIPEs.
Vindya received BSc (Hons) degree in Chemistry from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka (2019). She did her undergraduate research in the field of polymer chemistry. Vindya joined the Ayres group in spring 2022, where her research focus on the synthesize of porous polyurethane polyHIPEs.
Undergraduate Students
We currently have a great team of undergraduates, and are looking to add students in our group.