Prof. Andy McNally

Andy attended the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with first class honors in 2003 earned an M.A. and M. Sci. in Natural Sciences with a final year project in Professor Ian Paterson's laboratory working on aldol coupling of Pelouroside A. He continued on to obtain his Ph. D. in 2007 with Dr. Matthew J. Gaunt working on a novel organocatalytic [2,3]-Wittig rearrangement using secondary amines as catalysts.

Andy moved to the US as a Marie Curie International Fellow to Professor David W. C. MacMillan's at Princeton University.  There, he developed the concept of 'accelerated serendipity' where high-throughput screening methods were used to discover new chemical reactions. A photoredox process that coupled amines with cyanoaromatics to make benzylic amines was discovered using this approach.

Andy returned to the University of Cambridge for a second Postdoc with Matthew Gaunt and developed palladium catalyzed methods to activate aliphatic amines via 4-membered ring palladacycle intermediates. 

Currently, Andy is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.