Dr. Thawani carried out his undergraduate studies in chemistry at Imperial College London (2012-2017), including an industrial placement at GlaxoSmithKline Stevenage within the Protein Degradation DPU. His masters thesis was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Edward Tate and involved the design of activity based probes for UCHL-1. He completed his PhD entitled "The Design, Synthesis and Photopharmacological Applications of Novel Azoarene Photoswitches" in 2021 within the Fuchter group. The varied nature of his thesis allowed him to explore using light as a tool to exert spatio-temporal control over ion channels and protein-protein interactions, as well as, conducting fundamental work on tuning the photophysical properties of azoheteroarenes. Choosing to remain on as a postdoctoral research associate, he played a key role in the synthesis of a first-in-class antimitotic helicene and co-developed a machine learning workflow for property prediction of photoswitchable small molecules. 

Dr. Thawani is a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Society of Cosmetic Scientists and is a recipient of the Royal Society for Chemistry Nucleic Acids Research Prize (2019), EPSRC Chemistry Doctoral Scholarship (2017) and GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals Prize in Practical Organic Chemistry (2015). 

Publication List

• The conducting state of TRPA1 modulates channel lateral mobility
  Cell Calcium, Volume 116, 2023, 102800 

• [5]-Helistatins: Tubulin-Binding Helicenes with Antimitotic Activity
  JACS Au 2022, 2, 11, 2561–2570

• Data-driven discovery of molecular photoswitches with multioutput Gaussian processes
  Chem. Sci., 2022,13, 13541-13551

• Optimization of a Series of RIPK2 PROTACs
  J. Med. Chem., 2021, 64, 17, 12978–13003

• Activity-based protein profiling reveals deubiquitinase and aldehyde dehydrogenase targets of a cyanopyrrolidine probe
  RSC Med. Chem., 2021, 12, 1935-1943

• TRPswitch—A Step-Function Chemo-optogenetic Ligand for the Vertebrate TRPA1 Channel
  J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2020, 142, 41, 17457–17468

• Extended pharmacodynamic responses observed upon PROTAC-mediated degradation of RIPK2
  Nat. Commun. Biol. 2020, 3, 140 

• A combinatorial approach to improving the performance of azoarene photoswitches
  Beilstein J. Org. Chem., 2019, 15, 2753–2764

Patent

• US20220280644A1

Book Chapter

• Molecular Photoswitches: Chemistry, Properties, and Applications (2022)