NEWS

See what is happening in the group


2024

March/April

  • Another publication from Haoxiang, this time in Polymer Chemistry. Check out how we can chance polymer topology after nanoparticles have been self-assembled.
  • A big welcome to three new team members: Qinqin, Ping and Shin. Qinqin will work on gene delivery into plants, Ping will study the in vitro behaviour of polymer nanodiscs and Shin will be developing stimuli-responsive nanoparticles from bottlebrush polymers.

 January/February

  • Congratulations to Haoxiang for publishing our nanodisc study in collaboration with the Gillies lab in Angewandte Chemie! Its open access and you can check it out here.
  • Markus was appointed to the ARC College of Experts for a 3 year term.
  • Congratulations to Emma, Max and Simran for publishing their extensive review on 2D polymer nanomaterials in Chemical Society Reviews. Well done!
  • Happy New Year from the PNG!

2023

Oct-Dec

  • Alicia wins Sydney Nano Publication Award for her PISA battery paper.
  • Markus was awarded Fellowship status with the Higher Education Academy.
  • Congratulations to Xinyi, for her review article on carborane polymers in ACS Polymers Au.
  • Congratulations Jakob, who in collaboration with Parathan made anion-sensing copolymers, published in MRC.
  • Markus received the 2023 NSW RACI President Award.

Aug-Sept

  • Welcome to Ashim Kadariya, joining us for his Honours year to work on PISA templating of carbon hybrids.
  • Parathan submitted his PhD thesis. Well done!

 May-July

  • Welcome to Keziah Langdon, joining us for a Masters research visit from Southampton, UK. She will be working on hydrogel templating of metal oxides.
  • Congratulations to Haoxiang! Our collaboration with colleageus from engineering has been published in Gels
  • Welcome officially on board in Australia Karun! He will be working on proteoglycan mimics in collaboration with Prof Travis Klein at QUT.

  March/April

  • Welcome to Manoël Gbaguidi, joining us for a Masters research visit from Sorbonne University, France. He will be working on light-driven polymerisations.
  • Congratulations to Yen Theng (Alicia)! Her paper on cellulose nanocrystals for hybrid materials and battery anodes was published in Polymer Chemistry. This paper is also featured in the 2023 Pioneering Investigators Issue!
  • We moved into our new labs! Our group is now located in brand new synthetic labs in the School of Chemistry. Come visit us!
  • Welcome back Dr Yen Theng (Alicia) Cheng rejoining our team as a postdoctoral research associate.

 January/February

  • Markus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (FRACI).
  • Congratulations to Yen Theng (Alicia)! Her paper on PISA for hybrid materials and battery anodes was published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
  • Congratulations to Markus for being awarded an USYD SOAR Prize.
  • Happy New Year from the PNG!

2022

November/December

  • Parathan and Markus won the 2022 Sydney Nano Publication Prize for their study in Adv. Healthcare Mater.
  • Congratulations to Jennifer, Yining and Daniel for finishing their Honours year. We are proud of you!
  • Xinyi Zhang has successfully transferred to a PhD candidate in our group and continues to work on carborane-containing polymers.
  • Markus was awarded funding via the UA-DAAD Australia-Germany Cooperation Scheme to work with Prof. Eva Blasco at Heidelberg University on Adaptive Polymer Inks.
  • Congratulation to Yen Theng (Alicia) for receiving her PhD! Well done!

 

October

  • Welcome to PhD student Karun Mishra. He will be working on proteoglycan mimicking nanomaterials.
  • Markus was awarded funding by the Office of Global Engagement to collaborate with Prof Byong-Su Kim at Yonsei University (Republic of Korea).
  • Markus presented at the International Conference on Emerging Advanced Nanomaterials in Newcastle, and gave a Plenary lecture at the Queensland Annual Chemistry Symposium in Brisbane.

September

August

  • A warm welcome to our new undergraduate student Sofia Balingit. She joins us as part of the Daylell program and will work with Haoxiang on PET-RAFT systems.
  • Congratulation to Yen Theng (Alicia) who has delivered her completion seminar.  Well done!

July

  • Welcome to Chenyou Zhang. Chenyou's PhD will focus in mechanosensing polymers.
  • Alicia, Parathan and Markus attended the 2022 RACI National Congress in Brisbane.
  • The entire group attended the PolyNSW symposium at UTS. Haoxiang and Parathan gave poster presentations.

March-June

  • Markus published a new Feature Article in Chemical Communications as part of the 2022 Pioneering Investigator Issue. The article was selected as a Hot Article by the editors.
  • Sarah graduated with First Class Honours and Karen graduated as the second PhD from PNG. Congrats Sarah and Dr Hakobyan.
  • Markus took on the role of Associate Head of School (Research).

February

  • A very warm welcome to our new members: Haoxiang Zeng (PhD student), Jennifer Wesley (Honours student), Daniel Khaziran (Honours student) and Yining Du (joint Honours student with the New group).
  • Congratulation to PNG alumnus Karen who won the Dean of Science 2021 Postgraduate Research Prize for Outstanding Academic Achievement. Amazing stuff! Well done!

 January

  • Congratulations to Parathan! His paper on MPB behaviour in vivo was just published in Advanced Healthcare Materials.
  • A very warm welcome to our new members: Haoxiang Zeng (PhD student), Jennifer Wesley (Honours student), Daniel Khaziran (Honours student) and Yining Du (joint Honours student with the New group).
  • Congratulations to Markus for being awarded an ARC Discovery Project in collaboration with Profs Travis Klein (QUT) and Andre Groeschel (University of Muenster).
  • Happy New Year from the PNG!

 2021

 December

  • We wish everyone a calm and restful end of the year!
  • Congratulations to Markus who got promoted to Associate Professor.

November

  • Congratulations to Alicia who took out a presentation award at the PolyNSW symposium.
  • Sarah finished her Honours year, and was one of the very first students who defended her thesis via the new assessment mode, using a viva. Well done Sarah!

October

  • We warmly welcome our new postdoc Dr Max Worthington. He joins us from Flinders University and will be working on realising polymer nanodiscs via self-assembly approaches. Welcome Max!

 

June-October

  • We entered long period of restrictions in Sydney (due to COVID19) and the School was closed.
  • Congratulations to Karen for submitting his PhD thesis and for publishing again in Macromolecules. Well done!
  • Parathan won the "best presentation" prize at the Sydney University Chemical Society postgraduate research symposium. Well done!
  • Markus won the 2021 Rennie Memorial Medal awarded by RACI.

 

May

  • Markus was awarded funding by the NSW Government to organise a polymer symposium at USyd in November in 2021. More info to follow soon.

April

  • Congrats to Thomas, on his paper in Macromol Chem Phys on combining RAFT and ROMP for degradable polymer brushes.
  • Congratulations to Antoine and the team for publishing new polymer brush research. We could show that the stiffness of polymer brushes influences the outcome of cell experiments.

March

February

  • Welcome to Sarah Nguyen starting her Honours in the Group. She will be working on using hydrogels to structure mixed metal oxides for battery applications.

January

  • We say goodbye to Emma! All the best at your new role at Uni Newcastle!
  • Our joint work with the Mahon and Voelcker labs has been published in Biomacromolecules.
  • Karen's work on using bismuth oxide to incorporate ATRP initiators into RAFT polymers has been highlighted by Prof. Swager in Syn. Letters
  • Happy New Year from the PNG!

 2020

December

  • We bid farewell to Thomas who has been with us since 2018! All the best back in Germany!

 November

  • New publication out in Macromolecules. Our journey into heterogeneous photocatalysis continues. Well done Karen!
  • Congratulations to Gabrielle Shiels for completing her Honours Year! Well done!

 

September

 

August

  • Congratulations to Markus for being awarded a Future Fellowship by the Australian Research Council to investigate "Polymer Nanodiscs".  The project will run from 2021-2025.

July

May

  • Good news! We are proud to report a new method of templating metal oxides into porous nanomaterials. Just out in Chemistry of Materials.
  • It's been a few quiet months. The pandemic meant an abrupt end to the research visits of Stefanie and Moritz. We wish them well!

 February

  • Welcome to Moritz Koehler from the group of Prof. Felix Schacher at Uni Jena for a 3 month collaborative research visit on polymer brushes.
  • Welcome to Stefanie Tjaberings from the Groeschel Lab *Uni Duisburg-Essen) for a 2-month research stay as part of the strategic funding by UA-DAAD.
  • Welcome to our Honours student Gabrielle Shiels. Gabrielle will also be working with Prof Kate Jolliffe on anion binding polymers.

 

January

  • Welcome to Jasmine Todoroska (Denison Scholar)! Over the next 6 weeks, Jasmine is helping us to develop a new polymer experiment for undergrad labs.
  • Happy New Year from the PNG!

2019

December

  • Congratulations to Amanda, Carly and Parathan on their graduation with First Class Honours! Well done!

 

November

  • Together with Shane Wilkinson, Markus presented at the Australian Learning Analytics Summer Institute at the University of Wollongong on how to use a Student Relationship Engagement System in peer assessment.
  • Our in-house  collaboration with Dr Girish Lakhwani was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Congrats Ashish, Girish & team!
  • We won the 2019 Sydney Nano Publication Prize for using semiconductor photo-catalysis in polymer synthesis.

October

  • Markus visited the Steinmetz Lab at UCSD to set up collaborative work for 2020.

 September

August

  • Welcome to Cheryl! Cheryl joined the group to do her Honours year to work on cartilage mimetic materials.
  • We received funding from the Office of Global Engagement for a collaboration with the University of California San Diego to explore synthetic virus mimics. We are looking forward to a fruitful partnership with the Steinmetz Lab at UCSD!

 July

  • The PNG organsied the RACI NSW 1Day Symposium for Postgraduate Students and ECRs at the School of  Chemistry. We had 92 delegates across the day, with 16 oral and 26 poster presentation. Congrats to all the winners!
  • Welcome to Sophia! Sophia joined the group to do her Masters degree in collaboration with Prof Rendina's team.

 June

  • Markus spent 2 weeks in Germany as part of the UA-DAAD and visited the Max Planck Institute for polymer research in Mainz and the University of Jena.

May

  • Markus guest-edited a Special Issue on Functional Natural and Synthetic Polymers in Macromol. Rapid Commun. Check out his editorial here.
  • Congrats to our visiting student Andrea Steinhaus  on her paper in ACS Nano. The first of many studies between the Groeschel Lab and PNG under the  UA-DAAD cooperation scheme.

 

April

  • Welcome to Andrea Steinhaus from the Groeschel Lab at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Andrea will stay for 2 month as part of the UA-DAAD cooperation scheme to work on ring-shaped polymer particles.
  • Markus is speaking at ACS Orlando in a symposium on densely grafted polymers.

 March

  • Our recent Angewandte Chemie paper featured in the Mar/Apr issue of Chemistry in Australia. Check it out on page 8.

February

  • We held the 19th Australasian Polymer Summer School at USyd.
    50 delegates from across Australia learnt about polymer science from leading researchers across 3 days.
  • Welcome to Dr Emma Brisson! Emma joins the group as a postdoctoral researcher working on polymer self-assembly projects.

 

January

  • Welcome to Marius Schoettle (Uni Bayreuth) and Chenyou Zhang (Denison Scholar)!
  • Check out our new work on Visible-Light Driven PET-MADIX polymerisation in Angewandte Chemie. Well done Karen!
  • Happy New Year from the PNG!

 2018

December

November

  • Our JACS paper featured in the Nov/Dec issue of Chemistry in Australia. Check it out at page 18.
  • Congrats to Markus who has been promoted to Level C (effective 2019).

October

September

  • Our communication on structured polymer nanowires has just been published in JACS. Congrats Theo and team PNG!

 

August

  • Congratulations to Alicia Cheng for being awarded a competitive PhD scholarship by the University. Awesome!
  • Congratulations to Dr Thomas Gegenhuber for being awarded a 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Well done!

July 

  • Welcome to Carly Baker, Amanda Gunawan and Parathan Ramamurthi! All new Honours students in the PNG.
  • Welcome to Alicia Cheng! Alicia joined the PNG as a PhD student working on porous hybrid nanomaterials as electrode materials in solid-state batteries (in collaboration with Prof. Chris Ling).
  • Welcome to Jiaxin Wang! Jiaxin is a visiting undergraduate student from Nanjing University and will spend 2 month in the team.
  • Markus received the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in the category 'outstanding early career research'. Party time!

June

  • Welcome to Dr Thomas Gegenhuber!

    Thomas joined the PNG to work on polymer brush self-assembly.

  • Read our latest paper on MPBs and tissue penetration in Polymer Chemistry. Thank you New Group for the collaboration!

May

  • Our review on molecular brushes has just been published in Angewandte Chemie. Great work Theo and Clare!

April

  • Congratulations to Andrea and Theo!

    Our paper in collaboration with the Groeschel Group on the "Self-assembly of diblock molecular brushes in the spherical confinement of nanoemulsions" has been accepted in Macromolecular Rapid Communications as part of a Special Issue on 'Australian-European Polymer Self-Assembly'.

March

  • Welcome to Karen Hakobyan!

    Karen joined to do his Masters on designing new degradable molecular brushes.

February

  • Welcome to Cindy Tran and Celia Chen!!

    Cindy will do her Honours year in the team working on new ways to target breast cancer.

    Celia will work with us over the summer under the Denison Scholarship scheme.

     

January

  • Our article on Polymer brush guided templating on well-defined rod-like cellulose nanocrystals features in the 2018 Emerging Investigators Issue of Polymer Chemistry.

2017

 

December

  • Olivia and Markus published a blog for Materials Horizons.

  • Welcome to Alison Campbell! Alison will work with us over the summer under the Denison Scholarship scheme.

November

  • Congratulations to Olivia and Vivian who have just received Class 1 for their Honours year. Well done !

  • Congratulations to Olivia who has taken out 2nd Prize at the RACI NSW Analytical and Environmental Chemistry Group Annual Honours and Master-by-Research Presentation Evening. Olivia presented her Honours work on the synthesis and use of tailor-made block copolymers for nanoscale structuring of battery electrodes.

  • Funding success! Markus was awarded a 3-year DECRA fellowship by the Australian Research Council, starting in 2018. In this project we will develop a modular toolbox of novel polymer nanorods for better tissue penetration.

October

  • Welcome back Antoine! Antoine joins us as a volunteer for the rest of 2017.

 September

  • Welcome to Peter Truran! Peter joins us from York in the U.K. for his Masters studies. He will be working on smart molecular brushes.

August

  • Funding success! We were successful in the recent Sydney Vital Seed Funding round with a project on triple negative breast cancer research.

  • Congratulations to Théophile! He has been awarded one of the inaugural Australian Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology (AINST) Postgraduate Top-Up Scholarships. Well done!

July

  • Welcome back, Eamonn Burke! Eamonn starts his Honours year in the group working on polymer brush spheroid penetration. Welcome to Stone Woo! Stone joins as a TSP student for Semester 2 working on drug delivery systems for breast cancer treatment.

  • Markus will spend the next six weeks in Professor Olli Ikkala's group at Aalto University as part of an ANN Overseas Travel Fellowship.

June

  • Congratulations to Saeel for finishing his Graduate Diploma year. He his now off to Europe for a Masters degree.

May

  • We all escaped the Escape Room challenge and tasted our first group batch brew.

March

  • Congratulations (again) to Olivia! She has been awarded the R.J.W. LE FÈVRE DAASN RAO PRIZE in Physical Chemistry for her outstanding performance in Physical Chemistry at the Senior Chemistry level.

    Congratulations! Olivia has been awarded a 2017 Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE) Honours Scholarship.

  • Welcome to Edie Griffin and Jin-Lee Michael Teoh! Edie joins us as part of her Talented Student Program. She is working with Clare on a polymer-focused research project. Michael joins us for his Engineering Honours in 2017. He will be studying the tumour penetration of polymers using confocal laser scanning microscopy.

  • Welcome back, Eamonn!  He joins us for some volunteer work on self-assembly.

February

  • Theo, Olivia, Vivian and Markus enjoyed the 18th Australasian Polymer Summer School.

  • Welcome to Olivia McRae and welcome back Vivian Shang! Olivia joins us as an Honours Student working on hybrid materials for battery applications. Vivian was a former Summer student and joins us now for her Honours year working on polymer nanorods.

  • Welcome to Dr Clare Mahon! She joins us for 2 years as a Marie Curie Global Fellow. She will be working on using polymer brushes in sensing applications. Her project is in collaboration with the New Group.

  • We enjoyed having E/Prof Helmuth Möhwald in the School for 3 days.

January

  • Welcome to Antoine Niederberger! He joins us for five months as part of his Masters degree at the University of Maine, France. He will be working on SET-LRP polymerisations.

2016

December

  • Funding success! We have been granted beam time at ANSTO to investigate polymer nanorods in 2017.

November

  • Welcome to Lauren Minne! Lauren joins us for six weeks through her Summer Research Scholarship. She will be working on rod-like nanoparticles. Lauren wrote a piece about her experience in the group.

  • Markus has been appointed as a RSC Materials Horizons Community Board member.

  • Maria and Markus attend the 36 Australian Polymer Symposium at Lorne, Australia. Markus is an ECR speaker at the conference.

October

  • Funding success! Markus has been awarded a Overseas Travel Fellowship from the Australian Nanotechnology Network (ANN). As part of this, he will spend a few weeks researching in Finland in 2017.

 September

  • Funding success! Markus has been awarded the 2016 Selby Research Award for his work on polymer nanorod drug delivery systems.

  • Welcome to Dominik Seeberger! Dominik joins us as a visiting student from Bayreuth University in Germany. He will be working on cylindrical polymer brushes.

August

  • Welcome to Maria Morits! Maria joins us as a visiting PhD student from Aalto University in Finland. She will be working on sustainable hybrid materials.

July

  • Welcome again to Saeel Momin! Saeel joins us for ten months to do his Graduate Diploma research. He will be working on polymer self-assemblies for therapeutic delivery.

June

  • Our article on Molecular Polymer Brushes in Nanomedicine featured in Wiley's Materials Views.

May

  • Markus hosts DuPont Fellow Dr Alan English as part of the NSW 2016 Solomon Lecture series.

     

March

  • Our article on Passive tumour targeting and extravasation of cylindrical polymer brushes in mouse xenografts features in the 2016 Emerging Investigators Issue (Chem Commun).

    Thank you to Chris, Dharmini and Cameron for collaborating.

  • Our article on Cylindrical Polymer Brushes – Anisotropic Building Blocks, Unimolecular Templates and Particulate Nanocarriers is on the cover of Polymer.

February

  • Welcome to Theophile Pelras! Theo joins as the first PhD student of the group. He will be working on novel compartmentalised polymer brushes.

  • Congratulations to Dr Clare Mahon! Clare will join us as a Marie Curie Global Fellow in January 2017. We will be working on Polymer brush sensing arrays for the identification of pathogens (GLYCOSENSE).

January

  • Funding success! Markus receives Seedfunding from the University to boost polymer brush research.

  • Welcome to Vivian Shang and Eamonn Burke! Eamonn joins us as part of the Summer Scholarship program. He will be working with us for six weeks. His project is looking at zwitterionic polymer brushes. Vivian joins us also as part of the Summer Scholarship program. She will be working with us for six weeks. Her project comprises telechelic RAFT polymers.

  • Markus becomes a member of Sydney Nano and also commences as Honorary Secretary of the Sydney University Chemical Society.

2015

December

  • Funding success! A proposal for a comprehensive polymer characterisation system led by Markus has been successful. We will be purchasing a new GPC and light scattering unit. The instrumentation will be located in the KCPC.

  • Markus wrote an article on his research for Chemistry News: 'Architectures of the nanoworld'

November

  • Markus joins the RACI NSW Polymer Group as an executive Committee Member. 

 September

  • Welcome to Saeel Momin and Leo Jiang! Saeel joins the group as a volunteer to learn more about the synthesis of RAFT agents. Leo joins the group as part of the Talented Student Program. He will be working on telechelic RAFT polymers.

June

Welcome to the Polymer Nanostructures Group! I am Markus Muellner, a new Lecturer in the School of Chemistry. I have recently started the Polymer Nanostructures Group as part of the Key Centre for Polymers and Colloids (KCPC).


Markus has left The University of Melbourne after relinquishing his McKenzie Fellowship in May 2015.