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Professor Aibing Yu UNSW Scientist of the Year
 Centre Chief Investigator Professor Aibing Yu (UNSW School of Materials Science and Engineering) has won the UNSW Scientist of the Year Award in the Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Sciences Category.
The NSW Scientist of the Year Awards were established in 2008 to recognise and reward the state's leading researchers for cutting edge work that generates economic, health, environmental or technological benefits for NSW.
Awards were granted to individuals on the basis of excellence and impact of research;
current work (in the last 5 years) that addresses a significant health, environmental or technological challenge facing NSW; contribution and involvement with the research sector (e.g., volunteerism through participation in professional societies, outreach programs, peer review, conference organisation) and
work that has potential to impact on the priorities set out in the NSW State plan and the NSW Innovation Statement.
Professor Yu has been with the Centre since its beginning. He is a global leader in particle/powder technology and process engineering and has made many significant contributions, recognised as an authority in the areas of particle packing, particulate and multiphase processing and simulation and modelling. This award, one of the most prestigious science prizes in NSW, is apt recognition of his contributions to science and research. The awards were presented at a ceremony in Sydney on Wednesday night.
Professor Yu was also announced as the winner of the ExxonMobil Award on 28 Sept. 2010 in Chemca 2010.
Image: from left NSW's first Chief Scientist-Professor Mary O'Kane, NSW Governor of NSW-Professor Marie Bashir, Prof. Aibing Yu and Minister for Science and Medical Research-Ms Jodi McKay)
Awards and recognitions
UQ Foundation Award - Dr Chenghua Sun
Dr C henghua Sun, Centre researcher from UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, has received a $70,000 UQ Foundation Award for his research into metal-free photocatalysts for solar hydrogen production, aiming to facilitate the application of nanomaterials in clean energy.
Using sunlight to produce hydrogen from water is an ideal clean fuel, which has the potential to significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels and lower the associated green house gas emissions. According to Dr Sun, the major challenge is that most materials currently employed for this purpose, known as photocatalysis, can only work under ultraviolet light and therefore are not very efficient, and are prone to rapid degradation and reduced durability.
Dr Sun is interested in graphitic carbon nitides (C3N4) for its impressive ability to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and its durability in sunlight. C3N4 is more efficient than current materialsas it can adsorb light in the visible range and it can be easily doped to further improve its performance. It provides a totally new option for the design of advanced photocatalysts and my research will make an important contribution to understanding how the advantages of C3N4 might be harnessed for solar-hydrogen production. Dr Sun will use computer simulation to conduct theoretical studies which will inform the synthesis of nanosheets in the laboratory.
The UQ Research Excellence Award complements the Queensland Smart Futures Fellowship awarded to Dr Sun in 2009 and will enable him to strengthen his relationship with his collaborator Professor Hui Ming Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Graeme Jamieson Award
Ms Hilda Wiogo, Centre PhD student from UNSW, has been awarded this years Graeme Jameson Award from the Australasian Particle
Technology Society (APTS) for her paper Stabilisation Study of Carboxyl Coated Iron Oxide Nanoparticles in Biological
Media. The award is presented to the best paper by a postgraduate student on the basis of originality, clarity of written
presentation, quality of science and potential practical value of the finding.
The award is
named in honour of the Society’s founding president, Professor Graeme Jameson of the
University of Newcastle and is valued at $1000.
Travel and exchange
Australia Japan Emerging Research Leaders Exchange Program
Dr Akshat Tanksale, Centre postdoctoral fellow at UQ, has been selected by ATSE on behalf ofthe Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, the Japanese Society for the promotion of Science, and the Engineering Academy of Japan, as one of the eight mid-career Australian researchers to travel to Japan to participate in the Australia Japan Emerging Research Leaders Exchange Program.
The scheme was established in 2009 and promotes collaboration between mid career Australian and Japanese researchers by allowing participants to form research networks and explore areas of collaboration. This will be the inaugural visit of Australian researchers to Japan.
Dr Tanksale will be visiting several prominent research institutes and Universities in Japan, including the Tokyo Institute of Technology, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, National Institute for Materials Science, University of Tokyo, Osaka Prefecture University, Osaka University, Hokkaido University, Tokyo University of Science, and Tohoku University.
Research and publication news
 Centre paper Monodisperse Yolk–Shell Nanoparticles with a Hierarchical Porous Structure for Delivery Vehicles and Nanoreactors,
Jian Liu, Shi Zhang Qiao, Sandy Budi Hartono, Gao Qing (Max) Lu, was published in Angewantde Chemie as an inside cover. The paper was also highlighted in Nature Materials and Chemistry World.
The yolk-shell structure with a distinctive core@void@shell configuration, resembling an egg, has great potential applications as nanoreactors, delivery vehicles, lithium ion batteries electrodes, biosensors and surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates.
In their latest work on monodisperse yolk-shell nanoparticles with a hierarchical porous structure for delivery vehicles and nanoreactors, Centre researchers from UQ have explored a general method to synthesise yolk-shell nanoparticles with different particle sizes (200-700 nm), various types of cores (e.g. silica spheres, mesoporous silica spheres or rods, gold nanoparticles, magnetic Fe3O4 particles) and tuneable shell thickness (10-50 nm). The hierarchical mesoporous yolk-shell structures were obtained for the first time by encapsulating mesoporous silica with different pore sizes into the mesoporous silica shell. A three-step release profile of drugs was observed with these particular mesoporous rattle-type structures. To develop the nanoreactor, yolk-shell nanostructures containing Au nanoparticles doped onto silica spheres as core were designed and fabricated in this work.
The full paper was published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition,
Volume 49, Issue 29, pages 4981–4985, July 5, 2010
Nanotube Conference 2012
Professor Ian Ying Chen (Centre Program Leader) and other colleagues form the Centre have been successful in procuring the 2012 International Conference on Nanotube Research in Australia. Following a professional bidding process, the Steering Committee of Nanotube Conferences (SCNC) gave them a very strong vote of confidence and invited them to organise the upcoming NT12 conference in Brisbane in 2012.
The NT conference series aims to promote scientific progress, stimulate free exchange of ideas, and publicise progress in nanotube sciences.
NT11 wil beheld in Cambridge, UK.
Upcoming events
Centre annual conference
The Seventh Annual Conference of the ARCCFN will be held from the 25-26 November 2010 on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. This year the conference will be open to the broader scientific community. The scope of the annual conference series, Advances in Functional Nanomaterials, covers fundamental and applied research that applies to developments in functional nanomaterials and nanotechnology, including sessions in fundamental synthesis techniques, computational nanomaterials science, clean energy production and utilisation, environmental technologies, and health care.
For further information on the conference program and registration, please visit our website
http://www.arccfn.org.au/conf2010/
http://www.arccfn.org.au/conf2010/
The conference features in Wiley materials online events of interest.
Energy Storage Workshop
INVITATION TO ATTEND
The Centre for Energy Research and Policy Analysis (CERPA) at The University of New South Wales is hosting the First Australian Workshop on Energy storage including battery and hydrogen storage technology
Date: 11 November, 2010
Location: Engineering Design Studio, The University of new South Wales, Sydney
For more information see: http://www.cerpa.unsw.edu.au/news/index.htm
CHEMECA 2011
CHEMECA 2011 will be held in Sydney from 18 - 21 September 2011.
The theme of Chemeca 2011 is "Engineering a Better World" which has been chosen to acknowledge 2011 being the UN Year of Humanitarian Engineering. The year is also the IUPAC International Year of Chemistry. These international themes will form integral components of our conference in Sydney.
Chemeca 2011 will provide an excellent forum for chemical engineers and scientists to showcase their research efforts and technologies. It will give opportunities to listen and share vision with leaders of the profession from industry, government and academia to discuss solutions to the grand challenges humanity faces, such as energy, water, food and the environment
General news
Newsletter Nanomatters is also available as an email edition or online at the Centre’s website www.arccfn.org.au. To register for our email editions, please email Paulette Baumgartl at p.baumgartl@uq.edu.au
Website The Centre’s website (arccfn.org.au) contains information on the Centre’s aims, governance, research activities, publications, news items and interesting links. All current and past newsletters and annual reports are also available to download from the site.
Contacts
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Centre Head Office
Ms Celestien Warnaar
ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials
Level 5 West, AIBN
Cnr College and Cooper Roads
The University of Queensland
Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia
t: (+61) 7 3346 3883
f: (+61) 7 3346 3973
e: c.warnaar@uq.edu.au
www.arccfn.org.au |
NSW/ACT Node
Professor Rose Amal
ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials
School of Chemical Engineering and Industrial Chemistry
The University of New South Wales
Sydney, NSW, 2052
t: (+61) 2 9385 4361
f: (+61) 2 9385 5996
e: r.amal@unsw.edu.au
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