The Group
The Cooke Group is an ever adapting, motivated group of researchers from Masters students at the beginning of their careers to Postdocs with years of experience. You will find who makes up the group below.
Graeme Cooke
Postdocs
Dr Dylan Wilkinson
Dylan is currently working on the development of chiraloptical organic dyes as part of a collaboration with Malcolm Kadodwala's group. Previously, Dylan worked on the develoment of polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) for optoelectronic applications in collaboration with Neil McKeown (Edinburgh) and Ifor Samuel (St Andrews), as well as organic charge transport materials for perovskite solar cells in collaboration with the Docampo Group. Prior to his postdoctoral position, Dylan completed a PhD in the group in 2021, developing organic cathode materials for Lithium and Sodium ion batteries. Dylan completed a BSc Chemistry at the University of Glasgow in 2017 which included a research project synthesising bay quinones under the supervision of Dr Goetz Bucher.
Dr Eman Hussien
I completed a BSc in Applied Chemistry from Jordan University of Science and Technology in 2007. After that, I worked as a school science teacher for two years. In 2017, I started an internship to study the self-assembly of peptides and peptoids under the supervision of Dr. Aaron Lau at the University of Strathclyde followed by a short internship in Prof Peter Skabara's group at the University of Glasgow. I carried out my PhD in the Skabara research group working on the electrochemical evaluation of organic semiconductors for device applications. I am currently researching electropolymerisation of organic materials in the Cooke Group. Outside of work I am a mother of three children, who I spend most of my time with.
PhD Students
Lewis Mackenzie
Lewis graduated with a BSc in chemistry from the University of Glasgow in 2019. In his final year project he worked as part of the Cooke group synthesising dyes for bulk heterojunction organic solar cells. Lewis then worked as an analytical chemist at Charles River Laboratories for a year before returning to the Cooke group to start his PhD in 2020. Lewis is currently working on the synthesis of organic charge transport materials for perovskite solar cells.
Abdul-wasir Shaka
Abdul-Wasir is a PhD student in the Cooke group. He did his undergraduate and masters degrees at Ambrose Alli University, Nigeria. He is presently working on making Hole Transport Materials (HTMs) that can self-assemble on perovskite surface acting to passivate them and improve their stability in solar cells. Aside this, he is working on improving the pattern of arrangement of SOT-OH, a derivative of Spiro-OMeTAD made by the group, by incorporating hydrogen bonding groups forcing the compound’s molecules to aggregate in a certain pattern hoping to improve its consistency and film forming ability when spin coated.
Wai Kin Yiu (Cyrus)
Cyrus is a final year PhD student under joint supervision with Dr Pablo Docampo, researching novel materials in the device fabrication of perovskite solar cells.
Abarna Sekar
Abarna is a final year PhD student developing novel self-assemble monolayer materials for solar cell application.
Gregor MacLeod
Gregor is a third year PhD student developing novel organic polymers as additives and dopants to enhance performance of hole transport materials in perovskite solar cells.
Masters & Undergraduate Students
Anurika Vivian Ajaero
2854328a@student.gla.ac.uk
Vivian is carrying out an Masters project in the group. Vivian is researching self assemble monolayer materials for solar cell application