Seasons
greetings from the NSW President
 The year is
coming to an end with a number of events for the RACI NSW Branch. Last
week I had the pleasure of attending the final meeting of the Chemical
Education Group at which Professor Rose Amal from the University of NSW
spoke. Rose is also the Chair of the Chemeca 2011 conference here in
Sydney, which promises to be a focal point of International Year of
Chemistry celebrations. At the conclusion of her lecture, Rose showed
the promotional video for Chemeca 2011 and I must say that it is the
most professional advert I have seen in my 10 years with the RACI!
You can see the Chemeca Video here (The video is
to the right of the web page)
The Analytical Group Honours presentations were held last Wednesday and
the quality of student research was once again fantastic.
Congratulations to Amy Sutton from the University of Technology Sydney
on winning first prize before she takes up her new position with the
Victorian Police Forensic Science Centre.
On Thursday the
Pharmaceutical Sciences Group hosted a highly successful Analytical
Method Validation Seminar with more than 100 attendees from Sydney,
regional NSW and interstate. Well done to David Edmonds and his team
for securing Dr Ludwig Huber from Agilent Technologies to visit
Australia and speak for a RACI audience. The knowledge transfer that
this group facilitates goes a long way to maintaining local expertise
in regulatory environments.
The week concluded
with the prestigious Liversidge Lecture. I am proud to say that last
year the RACI NSW Branch nominated Professor John White from the
Research School of Chemistry at ANU for this honour and it was endorsed
by the Royal Society of NSW who are the custodians of this biennial
lecture. John is a former National President of the RACI who has been a
maverick of neutron scattering techniques for more than 40 years. His
passion for chemistry extends to the arena of academic-industry
linkages where he has forged beneficial collaborations with many
Australian companies.
Since it is the
festive season, there are a number of recent awards that deserve
special mention:
- Dr Richard Payne
(School of Chemistry, University of Sydney) for his Young Tall Poppy.
Richard is an excellent presenter and we look forward to him inspiring
the next generation of chemistry students with his lecture program next
year;
- Dr Attila
Tottzser (Past President of the NSW Branch) for receiving the
Weickhardt Medal for Economic Advancement in Chemistry at the RACI
National Awards Dinner in Melbourne. Attila has worked tirelessly to
improve industry participation in the RACI and this is illustrated by
the new Industry Affiliates membership status for companies.
- Alastair Hey (Chair,
NSW Chemical Education Group) for being presented the Centenary of
Teaching (Secondary) award in recognition of his efforts to promote
participation in chemistry at the high school level as convenor of the
NSW Schools Titration Competition.
- Dr Rachel Codd from
the University of Sydney received the BIOTA Award for
medicinal Chemistry, for her research into small molecules as potential
therapeutic agents.
- Professor Leslie
Field from the University of NSW, was awarded the RACI's highest honour
the Leighton Memorial
Medal. The RACI's most prestigious medal and is awarded in recognition
of eminent services to chemistry in Australia .
- Dr Marcus Cole
from the University of NSW
received the National RACI
Organometallic Chemistry award for his putstanding research.
- And finally the
Pearson Education RACI Centenary of Federation Chemistry Educator of
the Year award was presented to
Dr Siegbert Schmid rom the
University of Sydney.
Finally, I would like to wish all RACI NSW members and their families a
very Merry Christmas, happy and safe 2011. The International Year of
Chemistry promises to be exciting and the RACI NSW Branch looks forward
to you celebrating with us.
Dr Adam Cawley
RACI NSW President
R&D Topics Conference.
December sees 11 NSW students and early career researchers
who are RACI members and are presenting oral presentations attend this
years conference. We are pleased to announce that each NSW RACI
oral presenter was supported by receieving a travel bursary. The
analytical division provided six bursaries, whist our branch and
the NSW Analyical Group provided five bursaries
Gloria Danmar UNSW
Elizabeth Murago UNSW
Rima Raffoul Khoury UNSW
Heather E Pace Sydney/CSIRO
Tom Creswell Sydney/CSIRO
Shaneel Chandra Macquarie
Thomas Sommerville Macquarie
Helen Price Wollongong
Luke Joshua Sweetman Wollongong
Cassandra Smith Wollongong
Ellaine Munton NMI
We wish our representatives well for the conference and would love to
hear bout the conference highlights - we will keep you informed
about their exploits!
Women Sharing a Chemical Moment in Time
An international networking project called Women Sharing a Chemical
Moment in Time is a breakfast function that will bring women in
chemistry together for a meeting on 18 January 2011, a week before the
official launch of the IYC2011 in Paris.
In addition to networking, the aim is to celebrate the pivotal role of
Mme. Marie Curie in chemistry.
The activity will link different breakfast meetings together globally.
For example, a group in Australia may connect with a similar group in
Asia, owing to the similar time zone, so that all may share a moment of
chemical time together.
Full details will be released next week. However we ask to keep January
18th from 7am - 9.30am free. We have booked the Stamford North
Ryde as our breakfast venue. This is an event not to be missed.
Workshop about “Polymeric Materials and
Polysaccharides”
Friday Nov 5 saw over
80 people attended this exciting workshop. It was a great afternoon of
fantastic networking and sharing of research experiences. Attendees
came from far and wide - traveling from across Sydney,
Wollongong, Armidale, Newcastle, Tasmania, and even Indonesia. The
scope of polymer presentations ranged from polymers coupled to
ruthenium complexes for cancer treatment, through to polymers
used in the construction of super capacitors.
Two awards were
presented at the conclusion of the workshop also. Cameron Ferris, from
the University of Wollongong, received an award for the best oral
presentation. His talk was on ‘Gellan gum hydrogel bioscaffolds for
soft tissue engineering’. His presentation was of great interest for
those present, especially as it highlighted a great end use for
polymers. Thomas Lee, from the University of Sydney, was the other
award recipient for his poster "Liquid flow at polymer brush surfaces".
The workshop was a
great success and served as a revitalisation event for the NSW Polymer
Group. Thanks must go to Dr Marion Gaborieau, and Dr Patrice
Castignolles both from UWS who have planned the reestablishment of this
workshop. The workshop could not have proceeded also, without of the
sponsorship and support from organisations such as John Morris
Scientific, Grace Davison Discovery Sciences, the University of
Western Sydney , the University of NSW, and the University of Sydney.
THE ROYAL
AUSTRALIAN CHEMICAL INSTITUTE - NSW RACI Organic One Day
Symposium 2010
This week over 150
Organic Chemists desended upon the University of Wollongong, braving
the torrential rain for the Annual NSW Organic One day Symposium. The
attendees were treated to fascinating oral presentations from our
states finest students and researchers. They heard an excellent plenary
talk from Prof. Chaozhong Li (Shanghai Institute of
Organic
Chemistry, China) on Lactam
synthesis via radical cyclization: control of regio- and stereoselectivity.
Whilst the Judges faced a
massive task of viewing 66 poster submissions. Attendees came from far and wide -
traveling from across Sydney, Wollongong, Armidale, Canberra and of
course from China!
It was a great day of
fantastic networking and sharing of research experiences. The high
standard of work saw six students receive prizes on the day.
Nick Green from ANU
received the prize for Best oral presentation with his talk entitled :
Organocatalysed enantioselective chemistry of dendralenes.
Highly Commendeds were awarded to Belinda Huff (UNSW) and Anh Thu
Tran (USyd) or their presentations also.
Have you considered advertising with
RACI NSW?
The
NSW Branch has put together some very competitive advertising packages
for 2010. Any interested parties are encouraged to contact the NSW
Branch office racinsw@chem.unsw.edu.au to discuss your
advertising needs. Discounts will apply for ongoing and repeated
advertisements. An additional 20% discount does apply for current Chemistry in Australia customers
also.
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