The Group

Ortu Group – Autumn 2022

From left to right: Alex Bowles, Yu Liu, Becky Sheppard, Elias Alexopoulos, Ajay Khela, Matthew Stevens and Fabrizio Ortu.

Postdoctoral Researchers

Yu ‘Archie’ Liu (2022-present)
Yu Liu (Archie) is from Xi’an, an ancient capital city, in middle of P. R. China. He studied chemistry at Northwest University and graduated in 2013. He then undertook his postgraduate studies at both Northwest University and the University of Nottingham, obtaining master degree in 2015. He then joined Prof. Deborah Kays group as a Ph.D. student, focusing on the synthesis, characterisation and reactivity of low-coordinate first row transition metal complexes. Currently, he is working on the stabilisation of subvalent Group 2 complexes and low-oxidation lanthanide complexes in the Ortu Group.

Archie is a keen cyclist and his lifetime ambition is to join the Tour de France cycling race (without taking any performance enhancing drugs). He also likes to go to Germany to visit his family.

PhD students

Elias Alexopoulos (2022-2026)
Elias came to the UK from Athens, Greece. He obtained his undergraduate degree at Cardiff University and started venturing in inorganic chemistry looking into homogeneous copper catalysis for his BSc project. He then spent a year doing an MRes at the University of York, where worked with Dr Luke Wilkinson on developing novel Mo2 paddlewheel complexes by performing reactions at the ligand periphery. He then arrived here at Leicester for his Ph.D., where he is looking into constructing novel rare earth complexes and applying them towards FLP chemistry. He hopes to contribute to the lab by providing good music and by not complaining when his experiments are acting up.

Outside of the lab, Elias enjoys running, cooking, reading (mostly non-fiction) and watching professional tennis, usually cheering for Stefanos Tsitsipas (or shouting at him for yet another 20 minute toilet break in between sets). As if Greek wasn’t complicated enough as a native tongue, he is also trying to get closer to his Italian background by practicing the language.

Yuqing ‘Alex’ Shao (2021-2025)
Yuqing (Alex) hails from Shenyang, northeast China. She gained her master’s degree in physical chemistry in 2021 from the Dalian University of Technology, where she mainly focused on the design and functionalization of metal-organic amine catalysts and their photocatalytic application in small molecule reduction. Before that, she studied polymer science as an undergraduate at Northeast Forestry University in Harbin. She joined the group in 2021 to study Ce photocatalysis funded through a Dalian-Leicester CSC scholarship.

In her spare time, Alex likes playing badminton and climbing sometimes. She also pretends to love skateboard but still can’t do any cool tricks other than sliding. Her other hobbies include planting avocados and watching Modern Family over and over again.