Le Fevre Memorial Prize- Australian Academy of Science

The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London with the distinguished physicist Sir Mark Oliphant as founding president. The objectives of the academy are to promote science through a range of activities.

The Le Févre Memorial Prize commemorates the work of the late Professor R.J.W. Le Févre, FAA FRS. Its purpose is to recognise outstanding basic research in chemistry by scientists under 40 years of age at the closing date, except in the case of significant interruptions to a research career.

Dr. Pall Thordarson

A young, passionate and respected nanotechnology and nanobiology researcher

Dr Pall Thordarson is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Chemistry, University of New South Wales. He has made outstanding contributions to molecular devices and materials using supramolecular and bioconjugate chemistry. He uses nanotechnology inspired by or mimicking biological systems to create smart gels and bio-devices driven by sunlight.

Dr Thordarson’s research is the area of bio-mimetic chemistry and its application in nanotechnology/nanobiotechnology. His research group first looks to nature for inspiration when it comes to solving the problems it currently deals within nanotechnology (e.g., biosensors or tissue engineering). This is the philosophy of bio-mimetic chemistry, which underpins most of the work of his group. To this end they apply a combination of organic synthesis, bioconjugate chemistry (chemical modification of biological molecules), cellular biology (for activity assays) and supramolecular chemistry to make our target systems and we use various spectroscopic techniques such as UV, fluorescence and NMR as well as microscopy techniques such as AFM, STM and TEM, to analyse these systems.

Dr Thordarson’s smart gels, formed by self-assembly, are designed to help anticancer drugs kill tumorous cells, reducing the side effects of chemotherapy. His light-driven biodevices are targeted to the creation of better biosensors for medical applications, as
well as combining waste treatment with renewable energy production.