Staff profile

William Brittain completed a masters degree in chemistry at the University of Birmingham in 2013. He then remained in Birmingham to conduct his PhD studies (awarded 2018) in the group of Prof. John Fossey with external supervision from Dr Ben Buckley (Loughborough University). For his PhD Will studied asymmetric copper catalysed reactions and in particular helped develop several asymmetric azide-alkyne cycloaddition reactions (click reactions). Will also took part in a visiting scholar program in 2015 and 2016 spending time in the laboratory of Prof. Eric Anslyn at the University of Texas at Austin. During his time in Texas he worked on the application of three-component boronic acid assemblies to asymmetric catalysis and high throughput enantiomeric excess (ee) determination.

Will moved to Durham University to take up a postdoctoral position with Prof. Steven Cobb in 2017. During his time in Durham he has contributed to a number of projects including peptide modification, protecting group development, biosynthetic pathway elucidation and asymmetric bi-aryl synthesis. In 2020 Will was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and appointed as an Assistant Professor (Research) to conduct independent research at Durham. He was recently appointed to the RSC Fluorine Interest Group committee. 

• Organic Methodology
• Peptide Chemistry
• Organofluorine Chemistry
• Asymmetric Catalysis

Journal Article

• Marsh, Thomas G. F., Santambrogio, Alessia, Murray, Ben J., Boulton, Lee T., Aguilar, Juan A., Yufit, Dmitry S., Sandford, Graham & Brittain, William D. G. (2023). HFO‐1234yf as a CF3 Building Block: Synthesis of Trifluoromethyl Quinoline and Chromene Derivatives from Trifluoromethyl‐ynones. European Journal of Organic Chemistry 26(11): e202300058.
• Wang, Shan, Brittain, William D. G., Zhang, Qian, Lu, Zhou, Tong, Ming Him, Wu, Kewen, Kyeremeh, Kwaku, Jenner, Matthew, Yu, Yi, Cobb, Steven L. & Deng, Hai (2022). Aminoacyl chain translocation catalysed by a type II thioesterase domain in an unusual non-ribosomal peptide synthetase. Nature Communications 13(1).
• Brittain, William D. G. & Coxon, Christopher R. (2022). Perfluoroaryl and Perfluoroheteroaryl Reagents as Emerging New Tools for Peptide Synthesis, Modification and Bioconjugation. Chemistry – A European Journal 28(7).
• Brittain, William D. G. & Cobb, Steven L. (2021). Carboxylic Acid Deoxyfluorination and One-Pot Amide Bond Formation Using Pentafluoropyridine (PFP). Organic Letters 23(15): 5793.
• Brittain, William D. G. & Cobb, Steven L. (2019). Tetrafluoropyridyl (TFP): a general phenol protecting group readily cleaved under mild conditions. Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry 17(8): 2110-2115.
• Brittain, William D. G., Dalling, Andrew G., Sun, Zhenquan, Duff, Cécile S. Le, Male, Louise, Buckley, Benjamin R. & Fossey, John S. (2019). Coetaneous catalytic kinetic resolution of alkynes and azides through asymmetric triazole formation. Scientific Reports 9(1).
• Fossey, John S., Anslyn, Eric V., Brittain, William D. G., Bull, Steven D., Chapin, Brette M., Le Duff, Cécile S., James, Tony D., Lees, Glenn, Lim, Stephanie, Lloyd, Jennifer A. C., Manville, Charles V., Payne, Daniel T. & Roper, Kimberley A. (2017). Rapid Determination of Enantiomeric Excess via NMR Spectroscopy: A Research-Informed Experiment. Journal of Chemical Education 94(1): 79.
• Brittain, William D. G., Buckley, Benjamin R. & Fossey, John S. (2016). Asymmetric Copper-Catalyzed Azide–Alkyne Cycloadditions. ACS Catalysis 6(6): 3629.
• Brittain, William D. G., Chapin, Brette M., Zhai, Wenlei, Lynch, Vincent M., Buckley, Benjamin R., Anslyn, Eric V. & Fossey, John S. (2016). The Bull–James assembly as a chiral auxiliary and shift reagent in kinetic resolution of alkyne amines by the CuAAC reaction. Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry 14(46): 10778.
• Fossey, John S. & Brittain, William D. G. (2015). The CASE 2014 symposium: Catalysis and sensing for our environment, Xiamen 7th–9th November 2014. Organic Chemistry Frontiers 2(2): 101.
• Cao, Zhong-Yan, Brittain, William D. G., Fossey, John S. & Zhou, Feng (2015). Recent advances in the use of chiral metal complexes with achiral ligands for application in asymmetric catalysis. Catalysis Science & Technology 5(7): 3441.
• Brittain, William D. G., Buckley, Benjamin R. & Fossey, John S. (2015). Kinetic resolution of alkyne-substituted quaternary oxindoles via copper catalysed azide–alkyne cycloadditions. Chemical Communications 51(97): 17217.