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Research Groups

The Harding Group

Welcome to the Harding Research Group website. Our group are interested in applying the tools of chemistry to biological problems. Our research has a highly multi-disciplinary approach and spans synthetic organic, inorganic, supramolecular, and biological chemistry. We rely heavily on high-field NMR spectroscopy to characterise solution interactions, but also use a range of characterisation techniques depending on the research question and molecular modelling and visualization techniques. For a flavour of our research please use the links below to review our research and publications.

People

Harding Group in 2007

Professor Margaret Harding
Dr P. Manohari Abeysinghe
Dr James Garner
Dr Jen Bodkin
Chandramathi Sherman, Ph.D. (2008 - current)

Former members of the group are listed here.

Location

The Harding group is located on level 10 of the newly renovated Chemical Sciences Building overlooking Randwick Racecourse. The School is co-located with the Analytical Centre that houses centralised NMR, MS, surface analysis, and microscopy facilities for UNSW. The lab is partitioned into a standard wet-chemistry lab and a biological section with state of the art equipment. Students benefit from a communal office area fitted with individual workstations. See the photo gallery for some pictures of our laboratory.

Research

Interested in Joining the Group?

Applications from potential Honours and Ph.D. students and Postdoctoral Fellows are welcome at any time. Please email a full CV, copies of your academic transcripts if you are applying for Honours or a Ph.D., a summary of your research interests or experience and the contact details for at least 2 referees.

Ph.D. students: For scholarship opportunities please see the Graduate Research School web site.

News

April 2008: Manohari and Margaret, with collaborators at UNSW@ADFA, publish recent results on stabilising antitumour metallocenes by forming host-guest complexes in Dalton Transactions.

March 2008: Chandramathi Sherman arrives from India to join the group for her Ph.D. on "DNA-Binding and Recognition Using Self-Assembly".

March 2008: Pamela Golamco graduates with First Class Honours.

November 2007: Pamela Golamco completes her Honours thesis "Thiol Based DNA-Nanoshuttles"

October 2007: James and Margaret make the cover (below) of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry with their Perspective article on "Synthetic α-helical peptide mimetics" which outlines potential approaches to new synthetic antifreeze proteins.
Cover of Organic and Biolmolecular Chemistry Oct 2007

July 2007: Manohari and Margaret publish a invited review in Dalton Transactions highlighting progress in the field of antitumour metallocenes in the last 5 years. This article was one of the most popular downloads of the month with 483 hits.