Achievements

2007

2008

The School congratulates the following people:

• Postgraduate students Vincent Ching, Yue Wu and Neeraj Sharma for their award of Joan R Clarke Scholarships.
  
  
• Emeritus Professor Len Lindoy on his award of the 2008 Leighton Medal by the RACI. The Leighton Medal is the Institute's most prestigious medal and is awarded in recognition of eminent services to chemistry in Australia in the broadest sense.
  
  
• Andrew McLeod who has been awarded the RACI Western Section Honours Prize for the best Chemistry Honours thesis for a student who is a resident of the Western part of Sydney. Andrew did his Honours project with Professor Peter Lay.
  
  
• Mr James Cochrane, PhD candidate, on his award of the Best Poster Prize at the 2008 RACI Biomolecular Chemistry Conference on Drug Design and Development.
  
  
• Ms Li Li on her award of a CSIRO OCE Postgraduate Top-up Scholarship.
  
  
• Congratulations to the following members of the School who were successful in their applications for International Program Development Fund (IPDF) support:
  • Emeritus Professor Len Lindoy, enabling him to continue his long-standing collaboration with Professor K Gloe and his group at the Technical University Dresden.
  • Dr Mat Todd, for A Pilot Open Source Project for Undergraduates, to develop an undergraduate lab class at Stanford where results are posted on the web and contribute to an open source research project.
  • Dr Mat Todd, for a second India-Australia Workshop on Plant Neutraceuticals (with Basil Roufogalis from Pharmacy), helping fund a visit to Sydney by several Indian researchers for a workshop on developing methods for the extraction and synthesis of small molecules for new pharmaceuticals.
  • A/Professor Sebastien Perrier, for the development of a Strategic Network on Soft Nanotechnology between the School of Chemistry and the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Polymer Science.
    
    

• Emeritus Professor Len Lindoy on his award by the Royal Society of Chemistry UK of an RSC Centenary Lectureship and Medal for 2009-2010 for his wide ranging and important contributions to coordination chemistry, ligand design and supramolecular chemistry.
  
  

• Dr Peter Rutledge who is the RACI Nyholm Lecturer for 2008 and who spoke to high school students around NSW on Chemicals are Good for You. Peter has been awarded a plaque by the RACI in recognition of his services.
  
  
• Dr Chris Ling who has been awarded a Visiting Fellowship at St Catherine's College, Oxford during Semester 2.

• Prof J Canning who, with A/Prof G Peng at UNSW, has been awarded a Linkage Grant for Highly Multiplexed Fibre Sensor Systems for Structural Health Monitoring and Risk Assessment of Critical Transport Infrastructures in the latest round. This project is to develop advanced photonic and telecommunication technologies for timely and reliably acquiring and processing key structural performance information. This will reduce structural failures and maintenance costs with reliable data of structure health monitoring and risk assessment.
  
  

• Professor Leo Radom who has been admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Leo was also selected as the 2008 Schleyer Lecturer at the University of Georgia.
  

• Professor Max Crossley who was the 2008 Distinguished Lecturer of the Chemistry Department at the Hong Kong Baptist University.
  

• Associate Professor Lou Rendina who has been awarded the Royal Society's JWT Jones Fellowship.
  

• The School's Postgraduate Teaching Fellows past and present (Pat Allen, Sam Banister, Kaitlin Beare, Katie Cergol, Jack Clegg, Liz Fellows, Hendra Gunosewoyo, Mark Hackett, Jill Halliday, Brianna Heazlewood, Joe Ioppolo, Dom Konkolewicz, Ambili Menon, Steven Rowling, David Schilter, Neeraj Sharma, Erin Sheridan, Grace Simpkins, Tyler Troy, Natsuho Yamamoto,Alexandra Yeung and Jenny Zhang) on their award of a 2008 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Support of the Student Experience. The program was described as an excellent, sustainable initiative and the Awards Committee was impressed by the breadth of impact of the program which they felt could be easily transferred to other faculties.
  

• Dr Chris Ling who has been appointed Chair of the NSW Synchrotron Consortium.
  

• A/Professor Tony Masters upon winning a 2008 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Teaching.
  

• Dr Mat Todd on his award of a Linkage Grant with the World Health Organisation in the latest round for his project Praziquantel: A unique pharmaceutical challenge in which he will be seeking inexpensvie synthetic routes to improve the affordability and availability of this drug for treating tropical diseases, and will explore an open-source model for research and development of a wide range of new drugs.
  

• Dr Adam Bridgeman on his award of the 2008 Faculty of Science Citation for Excellence in Teaching for the School of Chemistry. The Citation acknowledges the contribution of staff in the Faculty of Science to high quality teaching and enhancing the student learning environment. The citation recognises innovation, scholarship and excellent practice in teaching and learning as well as exceptional curriculum design, development and review.
  

• PhD candidates Yue Wu, Elizabeth Fellows, Mark Hackett and Annie Nguyen on their award of AINSE postgraduate top-up scholarships.
  

• Dr Mat Todd and Professsor Basil Roufogalis (Pharmacy) on their award of $20,579 from DEST's Australia-India Strategic Research Fund for a project entitled Plant Nutraceuticals and Bioactive Molecules: A growth opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry in Australia and India. The funding is for a workshop in India later this year, which will bring together academics and industrialists from both countries to generate new research collaborations in developing pharmaceuticals from native flora.
  
  

• Dr Ron Clarke on his appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow by the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
  
  

• Professor Leo Radom on the award of the 2008 Craig Medal by the Australian Academic of Science. Leo has made major contributions to the use of theory in areas of chemistry. His research covers the application of computational quantum chemistry to the study of chemical structures and reactions. He has contributed to areas such as gas-phase ion chemistry, substituent effects in cations, radicals and anions, free radical chemistry, 'designer chemistry', and transition-metal-free hydrogenation. His early papers provided a template for benchmarking and applying theoretical methods to chemistry. The David Craig Medal recognises the outstanding contribution to chemical research of Emeritus Professor David Craig, AC, FAA, FRS. Its purpose is to recognise contributions of a high order to any branch of chemistry by active researchers. The award is made annually.
  
  

• Associate Professor Lou Rendina and Associate Professor Michael Kassiou on their award of a research grant from the Cure Cancer Australian Foundation for their project: The Targeting of Brain Tumours by a New Class of Agents for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy.
  
  

• PhD student, Nahid Chalyavi, on her award of an Endeavour International Postgraduate Research Scholarship for 2008 - 2010 by the Australian Government.
  
  

• PhD student, Andrew Telford, on his award of a University of Sydney International Student Scholarship and a CSIRO Flagship top-up scholarship for 2008 - 2010.
  
  

• Professor Peter Lay on his appointment to the Science Advisory Committee of the Australian Synchrotron.
  
  

• Dr Siggi Schmid on his election as Chair of the RACI Chemical Education Division and Mr Justin Read on becoming Secretary of the RACI Chemical Education Division.
  
  

• Mr Justin Read and Dr Adrian George, who are part of a team from the Faculties of Science, Pharmacy, Vet Science, Education and Social Work and Medicine awarded a TIES grant for the project: Developing Student Motivation and Interest.
  
  

• Dr Siggi Schmid, who is part of a team across the Faculties of Science, Engineering and IT awarded a 2008 TIES grant totalling $112,000 for the "Development of Online Tools for Teaching, Self-Teaching and Assessing Numeracy Skills.
  
  

• Arthur Garske, on is 50 years of service to the School. Arthur retired in February 2008.