NEWS

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

Congratulation to Karen for his Perspective Article in Polymer Chemistry.

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

Markus gave a public lecture at the Frontiers of Science Forum, organised by the NSW Teachers Guild and RACI NSW. Connected to the event, he also spoke on Diffusion Science Radio.

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

New publication out in Macromolecular Rapid Communications on the formation of IPECs on molecular polymer brushes. Well done Theo!

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

Joint work with USyd Pharmacy has just been published in Pharmaceutical Development and Technology. Congrats to all involved.

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

Congrats to Tero! New paper on tannic acid particles published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering! Great effort by the team of Orlando Rojas.
Markus joined the International Advisory Board of the Royal Society of Chemistry's flagship journal Polymer Chemistry.

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

Our collaboration with Dr Chen at UCLA has just been accepted in Chemical Research in Toxicology.

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

Our work in collaboration with the Groeschel Lab has made the cover of the Special Issue on 'Australian-European Polymer Self-Assembly' in Macromolecular Rapid Communications .
Microscopy studies that we did with Dr G. Lakhwani were published in Journal of Physical Chemistry C. Congrats Ashish!

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).

Where to find us