Meet the Team
Alumni of the King-Smith Group can be found here.
Principal Investigator
Emma King-Smith
B.S., UC Berkeley, 2015
PhD, Scripps Research, 2021
emma.king-smith[at]ed.ac.uk
Emma is a University Research Fellow (Royal Society) at the School of Chemistry in Edinburgh. Her research program focuses on developing deep learning models for complex target synthesis.
Emma obtained her B. S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015 under the supervision of Prof. F. Dean Toste. Upon graduation, she joined the Small Molecule Process team at Genentech, South San Francisco for a year before returning to academia for her PhD. Emma received her PhD in 2021 under the tutelage of Prof. Hans Renata where she developed chemoenzymatic routes towards complex non-ribosomal peptide and terpenoid natural products. Inspired by the concurrent revolution in machine learning and AI, Emma pursued a postdoc as Newton International Fellow and Junior Research Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge with Prof. Matthew Gaunt and Dr Alpha Lee where she investigated practical machine learning model development for chemical applications.
When not working, Emma enjoys singing choral music, playing video games with her younger sister, and critiquing architecture with her father. Her life goal is to become a cat mom.
PhD Students
Julia Russ
Julia completed her MChem at the University of York in 2024. She carried out her fourth-year research project at Tohoku University, Japan, where she investigated the organocatalysed stereoselective synthesis of cis-3,4-piperidines, under the supervision of Prof. Hayashi. Julia joined the King-Smith group on a Brian R. Phillips Scholarship in April 2025, working on the development of machine learning models for chemical reaction prediction.
Outside of the lab, Julia enjoys volleyball, ice skating, art, and playing the violin. She also loves exploring other countries and going to the beach, having grown up on the small island of Jersey.
MChem, University of York, 2024
j.s.russ[at]sms.ed.ac.uk
Fletcher Sharp
Fletcher joined the King-Smith group in September 2025 after completing his MChem at the University of Edinburgh. During his final-year research project, he worked at the Australian National University under the supervision of Professor Lara Malins, developing an SPPS-based methodology for the synthesis of alpha-thioether linkages in Enteropeptin A analogues. His current research focuses on machine learning-guided strategies for total synthesis, in collaboration with the Lawrence group.
Outside the lab, Fletcher enjoys playing the drums, windsurfing, running, and travelling to new places.
MChem, University of Edinburgh, 2025
F.M.Sharp[at]sms.ed.ac.uk
Elisa Mathieu
Elisa completed her Bachelor’s degree in Trinity College Dublin. She undertook a final-year research project developing redox-active lanthanide-based metal-organic frameworks for water oxidation catalysis, under the supervision of Professor Wolfgang Schmitt. Elisa joined the King-Smith group in September 2025. Her current work focuses on the data-driven discovery of sustainable iron catalysts for Buchwald-Hartwig reactions, working in collaboration with the Thomas group.
Outside the lab, Elisa enjoys sea swimming, reading, gaelic football, and travelling.
BA, Trinity College Dublin, 2025
F.M.Sharp[at]sms.ed.ac.uk
Miri completed her MChem at the University of Edinburgh in 2020. Her final year research project focused on the development of a synthetic pathway to a uridine analogue for metabolic labelling of RNA in cells, under the supervision of Dr Annamaria LilienKampf and Professor Nick Gilbert. She joined the King-Smith group in 2026, and her current area of research is multimodal visual language modelling of chemistry literature.
In her free time she enjoys bouldering, running and exploring woodlands with her daughter.