Senior Lecturer at the School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. Previously Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow at Aarhus University in Denmark, funded by the European Commission. Prior to that I was a Postdoc in the United States, at Georgetown University in Washington DC and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. 

PhD in Chemistry, King's College London (2018). 

MChem, University of Oxford (2011). Member of Merton College.

FHEA, UK Higher Education Academy. 

Blood-brain barrier models

The treatment of central nervous system (CNS) disorders, including Alzheimer, Parkinson, and brain tumours, is hindered by the inability of drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which restricts brain exposure to less than 2 % out of the chemical drug space that spans ~10⁶⁰ molecules. CNS disorders are now an emerging public health problem, with Alzheimer's disease anticipated to affect 135 million by 2050. There are two major outstanding questions in the field of CNS drug delivery, namely (i) the unknown contributions of individual components of the BBB to the permeability of small molecules, and (ii) the unknown mechanism of change of the BBB integrity in disease and ageing. For (i), the glycocalyx is a component that is poorly understood but that plays a major role in CNS transport. For (ii), the BBB shows enhanced permeability in disease, which is ascribed to a number of mechanical factors, one of which is the thinning or uncrowding of the BBB. 

At Portsmouth, we develop all-atom computer simulation models of the healthy BBB endothelium, as well as novel in house permeability protocols. These include unguided molecular dynamics simulations, steered molecular dynamics, among others. 

Jorgensen Group Pure Profile 

Jorgensen Lab Website

ORCID

Service within the University: I serve as 

1. Impact Lead (International and Overseas) for the Institute of Life Sciences and Healthcare REF 2029 submission.
2. Impact Lead (International) for the School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences REF 2029 submission.

Service outside the University: I serve as 

1. Editorial board member for the Journal of General Physiology (2025-2028). 
2. Early Careers Committee member, Biophysical Society 
3. Reviewer for PNAS, JCIM, Proteins, Frontiers of Molecular Biosciences, Guest Editor for IJMS. 
4. I serve on the Advisory Board for Preprints.org (2025-onwards).
5. Co-topic editor for "Neurological biomarkers for drug delivery systems in blood-brain barrier research" in Frontiers in Neurology.
6. Editor of the Special Issue "Simulation and Artificial Intelligence Method Development for Complex Membrane Transport" 
7. Editor of the Special Issue "Computational Modelling at the Blood–Brain Barrier"
8. Editor of the Special Issue "Advances in Drug Delivery to the Central Nervous System"