About Dr Lee Williams
My expertise is centred around the use of instrumental analytical chemistry and the application of hyphenated techniques to the analysis of complex samples.
Over the last 12 years, my research has applied chromatography hyphenated techniques to the search for, and validation of, biomarkers for a number of diseases.
Currently, I am involved in the metabolomics and lipidomic study of prostate cancer, glioblastoma and atherosclerosis. The aim of this research is understand the underlying biochemistry, to develop new markers for diagnosis, prognosis and the identification of new mechanisms for drug targets.
In addition, this approach is applied to the comparison of yeasts and brewed products with the use of chemometric approaches to the development and characterisation of products of the brewing industry. This is in collaboration with BrewLab UK.
I have been responsible for the design and resource of an excellent analytical chemistry lab for our undergraduate and postgraduate students.
My research uses quantitative mass spectrometry and the routine use of UHPLC-MS, GC-QqQ-MS and UHPLC-QToF-MS. There is further implementation and use of CE-QToF-MS for the analysis of complex samples.
I am a committee member of the Royal Society of Chemistry – Separation Science group. Through which, I help organise national and international conferences to disseminate the most recent advances within the field of separation science. We also sponsor a number of summer placements within a cognate research topic.
Teaching and supervision
I am responsible for teaching fundamental and advanced analytical techniques and approaches to a number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
These techniques are tailored to individual courses but largely I teach quantitative analytical chemistry using standards, experimental design, UV, MS, NMR and IR Spectrophotometry, chromatography (LC, GC, CE), Isotope dilution mass spectrometry (quantitative MS).
These are aligned to the fields and clinical, biomedical, pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical science courses below:
Interests
My research is focused on the analysis of complex samples. Currently, my research is within the field of metabolomics and lipidomics, applied to a number of cancers and cardio vascular disease.