News
Find out about the latest news, announcements and stories about chemistry at ANU.
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Congratulations to Assoc. Prof. Colin Jackson and Prof. Martin Banwell who, with Beta Therapeutics Pty Ltd, have been awarded $420,000 under the ARC Linkage Projects Scheme for a project entitled 'Understanding the molecular basis of heparanase function'. This project aims to advance our limited understanding of the molecular and thermodynamic basis of heparanase function through investigating its conformational dynamics and the energetics of ligand binding, as well as by synthesising inhibitors to probe its activity.
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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.
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Fresh and clean water is becoming a scarce resource due to the multiple impacts of worldwide urbanization, industrialization, or growing global population. Ensuring universal access to fresh water is therefore an emergent issue of growing urgency.
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Climate change and energy security may be big global problems, but the solutions can often occur at a molecular level. How we deal with a range of gases, whether it is capturing and storing carbon dioxide, or turning hydrogen into a clean energy source to replace fossil fuels, will be essential to solving these problems.
A New Zealand local, who completed his doctorate at Oxford University and post doc in Vancouver before landing at the ANU in 2015, Dr Nick White is working at this molecular level to make his contribution to these solutions.
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The development of antibiotics has been essential to the massive advancements we’ve seen in medicine and health over the last century. However, antibiotic-resistance is leading many to fear we are entering a ‘post-antibiotic’ world, potentially returning us to a time where the most basic illnesses could kill once again. Through her work on synthetic peptides, future RSC researcher Lara Malins is hoping to combat this problem.
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Alumni Profile - Dr Brendon Hammer
It’s fair to assume that the most likely outcome of a degree in chemistry is a life in the laboratory. While the lab can lead to a lifetime of discovery, chemistry can also open up doors to all sorts of careers. Even international diplomacy.
Don’t believe it? Just ask Dr Brendon Hammer, an RSC alumnus and Australia’s current Ambassador to Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, Kosovo, Slovakia and Slovenia.
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Chemists have found a way to use sunlight to purify wastewater rapidly and cheaply, and to make self-cleaning materials for buildings.
The technology uses modified titanium dioxide as a photocatalyst that works with sunlight, unlike other leading water purification products on the market that need ultraviolet light.
Research group leader Professor Yun Liu from ANU said the team's invention was 15 times more efficient than leading commercialised products.
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For Ben Clifton, who recently finished his PhD at the Research School of Chemistry, solute-binding proteins has always been an area of interest. The latest student to finish a PhD on the Rod Rickards scholarship, Ben has a long history of researching these proteins at RSC.
“My honours and PhD research focussed on a family of proteins called solute-binding proteins (SBPs),” Ben explains. “We initially became interested in SBPs because they can be used to engineer fluorescent sensors for detecting specific molecules.”
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Developing a new medical drug often requires a detailed understanding of how and where the drug compound binds to the target protein. However, for large protein-ligand complexes, it is often difficult to find the ‘binding mode’ of the ligand on the protein.
As part of a new Australian Research Council (ARC) Grant, Professor Gottfried Otting and his team will use Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to enhance our understanding of such complexes, with a view on the creation of high-value drugs for diseases such as Dengue fever and the Zika virus.