Applied Research Award

The Applied Research Medal is awarded annually to a RACI member who has contributed significantly towards the development of, or innovation through, applied research, or in industrial fields. The work will cover the period of 10 years preceding the award, with the major proportion of the work having been done in Australia or its Territories.

Professor Thomas Maschmeyer FRACI CChem

Author of around 20 patents and 200 publications, cited close to 5000 times.

Professor Thomas Maschmeyer FRACI CChem is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Sydney, ARC Federation/Future Fellow and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He is author of around 20 patents and 200 publications, cited close to 5000 times. He serves on the editorial/advisory boards of eight international journals and is President of the Catalysis Society of Australia. In 2007, he received the Le Fèvre Memorial Prize of the Australian Academy of Science for outstanding basic research in chemistry by scientists under 40. He is cofounder of the Australian start-ups Ignite Energy Resources (2006) and Licella (2007) and was one of the founding professors of Avantium (2001), a Dutch high-tech company, now with 100+ employees.

In 1994, he worked with Professor Sir John M. Thomas at the Royal Institution of Great Britain as Australian Bicentennial Fellow and became the Assistant Director of the Davy Faraday Laboratories there in 1997, concurrently holding a research position at the University of Cambridge and a Fellowship at Peterhouse. In 1998, he was appointed to Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Organic and Catalytic Chemistry at the Delft Institute of Chemical Technology, becoming Vice-Chairman of that Institute in 2000.