The RSC has been awarded two Australian Laureate Fellowships from the Australian Research Council (ARC), including one prestigious named fellowship for world-class female researchers.

Congratulations to Professor Michelle Coote who was awarded the Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship for science and technology for a project to establish a new approach to chemical catalysis, and to Professor Gottfried Otting who was awarded a $2.6 million Australian Laureate Fellowship for a project to improve the design of lead compounds in drug development.

Professor Coote's $2.3 million Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship will help establish a new approach to chemical catalysis using the electrostatic effects of pH-switchable charged functional groups.

Using a combination of theory and experiment she hopes to establish a game-changing approach to controlling chemical reactions, while training the next generation of chemists in the principles of computer-aided chemical design.

"I am particularly pleased to receive the Georgina Sweet Fellowship and see this as an outstanding opportunity help address long-standing gender inequities in chemistry and STEM disciplines generally," Professor Coote said.

"We are at an exciting point in history where the need for change has finally been embraced, and I am proud be at forefront of developing strategies for effecting this change."

Professor Otting’s $2.6 million Australian Laureate Fellowship will be for a project designed to have immediate benefits in the design of lead compounds in drug development.

"It was simply wonderful to hear the news. The funding will give me the opportunity to implement new nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) approaches developed at the ANU over the past one and a half decades for streamlining the discovery of new drug molecules," Professor Otting said.

"It will also bring modern cutting-edge solid-state NMR techniques developed overseas to Australia and provide advanced training for Australian NMR researchers."

The RSC also was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in the latest funding round. The Fellowship (to the value of $681,000 over four years) went to Dr Pu Xiao for a project that aims to expand fundamental scientific knowledge of photochemistry for 3D printing.