Research School of Chemistry Summer Research Scholarships

Summer Research Scholarships provide promising students with experience of research work. This is particularly useful to students considering undertaking postgraduate research towards a higher degree.

The scholarships provide contact with distinguished researchers and enable students to use facilities and materials for research that may not be readily available elsewhere. They offer a challenging environment in which students have an opportunity to evaluate for themselves, and to demonstrate to others, their potential for research work.

Please contact academics to discuss alternative projects. They may be able to tailor projects to your particular interests.

Professor Tony Hill: Organometallic and Coordination Chemistry of the Transition metals, including applications to catalysis; Transition metal and main-group cluster chemistry and the chemistry of metal-carbon multiple bonds, with applications to organic synthesis. Alkynyl thioether macrocycle synthesis. Bioinorganic chemistry of sulfur ligated metalloenzymes, 'naked' carbon 'Cx' ligands. See potential project

Associate Professor Geoff Salem: Design, synthesis, resolution and coordination chemistry of multidentate ligands containing arsenic, nitrogen and/or phosphorus donor atoms, utilization of transition metal based complexes containing these ligands as catalysts in the asymmetric synthesis of optically pure fine chemicals. See potential projects.

Professor Ray Withers and Dr Yun Liu: Crystal chemistry: structural relationships, phase transitions and wide range, non-stoichiometric solid-solutions. Phyical properties, in particular dielectric, piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties. Synthesis, crystal growth, characterization, electron microscopy, group theory and structure refinement. See potential projects.

Professor Mark Humphrey: Organometallic, organic, coordination complex and polymer synthesis, spectroscopy, various electrochemical and spectroelectrochemical techniques, molecular modelling, electron microscopy and X-ray structural studies, and a wide range of nonlinear optical studies using high-power lasers. See potential projects.

Professor Martin Banwell: Synthesis and mechanism: application of strained organic molecules and reactive intermediates to the development of new synthetic methodologies; total synthesis of biologically-active natural products and their congeners; utilisation of microbial oxidation products in chemical synthesis; molecular basis of action of anti-mitotic drugs. See potential projects.

Professor Chris Easton: Biochemical reactions and molecular recognition: amino acid, peptide and lipid synthesis and metabolism; enzyme catalysis and inhibition; design and synthesis of molecular hosts; catalysis and kinetic resolution with host-guest complexes; resins and adhesives chemistry. See potential projects.

Dr Mal McLeod: Synthesis and catalysis: the total synthesis of anti-cancer and anti-fungal marine natural products and their analogues; the synthesis and biological evaluation of neuro-active alkaloid analogues; the development of catalytic asymmetric reactions for the synthesis of organic building blocks with high selectivity; and the development of genetically engineered enzymes for the for the synthesis of drug metabolites with application to sports drug testing.

Associate Professor Mick Sherburn: Organic synthesis, methodology and host-guest chemistry: Total synthesis of natural products utilising domino reactions; preparation of potential new antitumour agents and anti-Alzheimers drugs; construction and properties of molecules of fundamental importance; development of new methods to predict and control the stereochemical outcome of reactions; design and preparation of synthetic hosts for encapsulation, enantiomer recognition and catalysis. See potential projects.

Dr Russell Barrow: Our research is focused around the chemistry that is expressed in natural systems. We work in the fields of; chemical ecology where we examine the nexus that exists between naturally occurring chemicals and the behaviour they produce in whole organisms, bioprospecting where we isolate and identify biologically active natural products, and organic synthesis as it pertains to developing a greater understanding of the chemistry in the natural systems we explore.

Dr Max Keniry: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. NMR applications to structure and function of proteins and DNA. NMR techniques and methodology.

Professor David Ollis: Protein crystallography and engineering. Directed evolution is used to evolve new and useful enzymes. These new enzymes are of considerable utility and provide ideal tools to better understand the nature of catalysis. The intricate relationship between structure and function of native and mutant enzymes is elucidated using X-ray crystallography and other tools. See potential projects.

Professor Gottfried Otting: New techniques in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Protein structure determinations by NMR. Development of NMR and labelling techniques that provide quick access to structural and functional information. See potential projects.

Dr Thomas Huber: Structural bioinformatics is a highly cost-efficient solution for accelerated determination of the three-dimensional (3D) structure of proteins and protein-protein complexes from a minimal set of experimental data. The ultimate goal is to understand the delicately balanced, dynamic interactions between different molecules which form the basis of life and also offer key points for pharmaceutical intervention. The computational structural biology group develops innovative tools to determine the 3D structure of biological macromolecules form sparse experimental data of different resolution and length scale. See potential projects.

Dr Colin Jackson: Chemical and Structural Biology: Biological systems that are important to health and industry are studied and manipulated using techniques based in chemistry and physics. Systems include proteins and enzymes involved in pesticide resistance, the degradation of toxic compounds, pharmaceutical synthesis and resistance to antibiotics.Techniques include X-ray crystallography, computational chemistry, combinatorial drug design, protein engineering, enzyme kinetics and molecular biology. See potential projects.

Professor Mick Collins: Chemical physics, dynamics. Development of molecular potential energy surfaces, and the computational dynamics of chemical reactions and molecular motion. Development of methods to approximate ab initio electronic energies by molecular fragmentation. See potential projects.

Professor Michelle Coote: Computational quantum chemistry, polymer chemistry. Use of computational quantum chemistry to study the mechanism and kinetics of chemical reactions. Theoretical studies of radical reactivity and thermochemistry. Understanding and controlling free-radical polymerization. See potential projects.

Professor Denis Evans: Statistical mechanics of dense fluids. Computer simulations of viscous flow and heat flow in molecular liquids. Molecular basis of rheology. Chaos as the basis of statistical mechanics. See potential projects.

Professor Elmars Krausz: Photo-energetics, photo-transformations and spectroscopy using lasers. Absorption, luminescence, excitation, and Raman techniques combined as a multi-dimensional approach. Stark and Zeeman probes of critical chemical systems. Non-linear effects and laser selective techniques. Exploring and revealing fundamental photo-transformations in photosynthetic reaction centers and the creation of new solar molecular energy technologies. See potential projects.

Associate Professor Ron Pace: Natural and Artificial Photosynthesis. Electron paramagnetic spectroscopy of redox centers in natural photosystems, particularly the water oxidising Mn cluster in Photosystem II and the primary electron acceptor groups in this enzyme. Computational chemical (with Prof. R Stranger) studies on these systems and model complexes related to their function. See potential projects.

Associate Professor Edie Sevick: Physics of single polymer chains, force measurements on polymers and polymers at interfaces, optical tweezers for stretching polymers/biopolymers and for measuring microrheological response of fluids and colloidal forces, theoretical and computer simulation methods for studying polymers at the molecular level. See potential projects.

Professor Rob Stranger: We make use of quantum chemical methods, primarily Density Functional Theory (DFT), to explore the molecular structure, bonding and energetics of inorganic, bioinorganic and organometallic compounds, particularly those involving transition metal ions. With the development of very fast desktop computers and highly efficient computer algorithms in recent years, DFT has become an extremely powerful and reliable theoretical technique, not only for rationalizing the structures and properties of known chemical systems but also for exploring new or unknown chemistry. In particular, it is ideally suited to the study of transition metal systems, including their magnetic and spectroscopic properties. Transition metal ions also play a crucial role in a number of important industrial and biological processes, and increasingly DFT is becoming an indispensable theoretical tool to probe the mechanistic and energetic aspects underlying these processes. See potential projects.

Professor Richard Welberry: X-ray diffraction and theoretical studies of disordered materials. Computer simulation and modelling, with particular interest in flexible organic molecules, polymorphism in pharmaceuticals, solid-state inorganic materials and quasi-crystals. See potential projects.

Dr Terry Frankcombe: Chemical dynamics and reactivity. Advanced quantum dynamics propagation techniques. Solid state structure, energetics and reactivity, including DFT and molecular dynamics, particularly in the area of hydrogen storage. Kinetics of reactions of astrochemical interest. See potential projects.

Professor Mark Humphrey and Dr Marie Cifuentes: Research in the group involves molecular synthesis, spectroscopy, electrochemistry, modelling, theore:cal, structural, and nonlinear op:cal (NLO) studies (incl. unique (worldwide) NLO spectroelectrochemistry). See potential projects.

Professor Ray Withers and Dr Yun Liu: Crystal chemistry: structural relationships, phase transitions and wide range, non-stoichiometric solid-solutions. Phyical properties, in particular dielectric, piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties. Synthesis, crystal growth, characterization, electron microscopy, group theory and structure refinement. See potential projects.

Dr Colin Scott (CSIRO) and Dr Colin Jackson: Enzymatic biocatalysts are increasingly important in industrial and environmental processes. A thorough understanding of structure/function relationships is required, using X-ray crystallography and enzyme biochemistry techniques. See potential projects.

Dr Andrew Warden (CSIRO) and Prof Chris Easton: Second generation biofuels; Investigating new and effective enzymes for the conversion of biomass to reduced sugars, using techniques from assay method development and fermentation, to enzyme structure analysis and computer modelling. See potential projects.

Dr Carol Hartley (CSIRO) and Dr Colin Jackson: Enzymes, Molecular Evolution, Biochemistry and Biotechnology. SAM-dependant fatty acid synthase enzymes act on a number of lipid substrates to produce unusual modified fatty acids, which have applications as "green" alternatives to petrochemical feedstocks for manufacturing industries.See potential projects.

Dr Gunjan Pandey (CSIRO), Dr John Oakeshott (CSIRO) and Prof Chris Easton: Lignocellulose is potentially a crucial renewable feedstock for the production of energy and a wide variety of chemicals. See potential projects.