School of Chemistry, UNSW

News and Events

Justin Gooding awarded RACI R. H. Stokes Medal

At the 18th Australasian Electrochemistry Conference in Perth Justin Gooding was presented with the RACI R. H. Stokes Medal for Electrochemistry for his outstanding contributions to electrochemistry in Australia. Congratulations Justin!

Xunyu Lu wins RACI Bloom-Gutmann Prize, Stephen Parker wins Poster Prize

Xunyu Lu, a Ph.D. student in the Zhao group, has won the RACI Bloom-Gutmann Prize at the 18th Australasian Electrochemistry Conference in Perth. The Bloom-Gutmann Prize, which honours the founders of the Electrochemistry Division of the RACI, the late Professor Harry Bloom and Dr Felix Gutmann, is awarded to the best student presentation at the Australasian Electrochemistry Conference. The prize was first awarded in 1978. Xunyu has only just started the second year of his Ph.D. At the same conference Stephen Parker, a Ph.D. student with Justin Gooding won the Division 1 Analytical Electrochemistry Poster prize.

Chemistry Video Competition - closing date extended to 21 September

The School of Chemistry at UNSW is running a chemistry video competition from 30 January 2012 to 21 September 2012 (closing date has been extended from 30 April), and inviting high school students (Years 9-12) to submit a short video with the broad theme "Chemistry in Action". The competition has two categories: individual and team, with prizes of $600 and $1000 respectively. There will also be prizes for other standout entries.

Competition details are available on this pdf document. Please make sure you read all of this document before submitting your entry.

School of Chemistry Newsletter, March 2012

The March, 2012 edition of the School of Chemistry Newsletter is now available online. Read about our new staff, how we celebrated the International Year of Chemistry, a visit by a Nobel Laureate, and the story of crystallography at UNSW.

Justin Gooding - Royal Society of Chemistry Australasian Lecturer for 2012

Scientia Professor Justin Gooding has been appointed the Royal Society of Chemistry Australasian Lecturer for 2012. He is the 52nd such lecturer in this highly respected lecture series, and will be visiting a number of Universities in Australia and New Zealand this next year in this capacity.

Pall Thordarson wins the Le Fèvre Memorial Prize

Congratulations to Pall Thordarson on the award of the 2012 Le Fèvre Memorial Prize by the Council of the Australian Academy of Science. The Prize of $3,000 is an early career award which recognises outstanding basic research in chemistry.

Grant Successes

The School picked up a number of grants in the rounds announced in November: Drs Pall Thordarson and Chuan Zhao were awarded a DP of $315k for 'Photochemical and electrochemical control of redox enzyme cascades' and Prof. Justin Gooding led a NHMRC grant of $440k for 'A nanomedicine strategy for detecting and modulating protease activity in vivo'. New appointment Dr Luke Hunter was awarded a DECRA of $375k, entitled 'Selective fluorination chemistry: a tool for creating bioactive, shape-controlled peptides', which he is currently seeking to transfer across from U.Syd. Emeritus Professor Michael Paddon-Row won an ARC DP with his collaborator A/Prof. Michael Sherburn of ANU and Prof. Michael James of ANSTO, a Visiting Professor of the School, also won an ARC DP in association with Profs. Paul Burn and Ian Gentle.

RACI Medal winners 2011

Congratulations to Scientia Professor Justin Gooding for being awarded the H.G. Smith Memorial Medal for making the most significant contribution to an area of chemistry in Australia over the last ten years. Mohammad Choucair was awarded the Cornforth Medal for the best thesis in Chemistry in Australia in 2010. Mohammad was supervised in his Ph.D. by Assoc. Professor John Stride.

Howard Lectureship - Call for Applications

The School of Chemistry invites applications for a short-term visiting lectureship from an eminent academic in the discipline of chemistry to spend a period of 4 to 6 weeks in the School. The successful applicant will deliver a research lecture, meet with UNSW researchers, and deliver a series of undergraduate lectures. It is anticipated that the successful applicant will be able to establish productive research collaborations with staff at UNSW, potentially leading to new funding opportunities. Further information is available from this leaflet.

UNSW and Bragg Institute (ANSTO) scholarship on "Switchable Magnetism"

The aim of this project is to deliver crystalline materials displaying host:guest modulation of their bulk magnetic properties. The research will focus on magnetic materials consisting of molecular units in polymeric coordination complexes, the only materials able to provide the dramatic flexibility and control of both the lattice topologies and magnetic dimensionalities that are required for this work. The successful candidate will be co-supervised by A/Prof. John Stride (UNSW) and Dr. Richard Mole (ANSTO). (Full details available here)