Associate Professor Matthew Wilce (Chair)

Monash University
VIC

After completing a BSc (Hons) at James Cook University in Marine Biology/Chemistry, Matthew worked at the Australian Institute of Marine Science then moved to Melbourne to take up a PhD with Professor Milton Hearn in Bioseparation. His career in structural biology started when he took up a postdoctoral position with Professor Michael Parker at St. Vincent's Institute of Medical Research studying glutathione S-transferases' enzymes that are involved in cellular detoxification. Matthew then investigated a number of metalloenzymes working under the direction of Professor Mitchell Guss and the late Professor Hans Freeman at University of Sydney. In 1998 he moved to the University of Western Australia to take up a position in the Crystallography Centre and the Department of Pharmacology to start the first Structural Biology group in Western Australia. When plans for a new Synchrotron were announced, Matthew was keen to be geographically close to this resource and in 2005 he had moved to Monash University to join the team of Structural Biologist groups and further his work.

Associate Professor Matthew CJ Wilce
Building 76, Monash University, 3800
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Professor Roland De Marco

Curtin University
WA

Roland De Marco received his PhD in Chemistry/Physics from La Trobe University Australia in 1992. From 1990 to 1992, he worked as a Research Scientist at CSIRO Minerals in Melbourne undertaking research on lead/acid batteries, and he spent three years between 1992 and 1995 working as a Lecturer in Physical/Analytical Chemistry at the University of Tasmania. In 1995, he joined Curtin University of Technology, served as its Chemistry Department Head from 2001 to 2007, and was promoted to Professor of Chemistry in 2006. Currently, he is Dean of Research in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University. His major contribution in the field of electrochemistry has been the solution of electrochemical problems using surface and interface analysis methods, and his present research interests include electrochemical surface and interface analysis, electrochemistry, and electroanalytical chemistry. He has procured over $4 million in competitive research funding, and has published over 80 papers in internationally recognized journals. In 2008, he was the recipient of the RACI Lloyd Smythe Medal for excellence in research, leadership, service and teaching in Analytical Chemistry. In recent times, he has developed a strong interest in synchrotron and neutron techniques applied to electrochemical systems.

Research Professor Bill Skinner

University of South Australia
SA

Research Professor Bill Skinner leads Materials and Environmental Surface Science at The Ian Wark Research Institute (The Wark), UniSA. For over 25 years, Bill has researched the physics and chemistry of material surfaces using advanced surface analytical techniques. His primary experience has been in soft X-ray photoemission, surface-sensitive ion beam techniques and synchrotron radiation methods. He has been a user of, and has published work from, a range of synchrotron-based techniques, including XPS, NEXAFS, XANES/EXAFS, microspectroscopy (micro-XRF/XANES), SPEM, soft X-ray microscopy and tomography. Bill has used facilities at the AS, Taiwan, APS and Aladdin, and has studied a wide range of systems in, for example, bulk and surface chemistry of natural and industrial minerals, forensic and environmental science, plant science and biomaterials.

Professor Don McNaughton

Monash University
VIC

For more than 25 yrs Don has carried out research in molecular spectroscopy, principally in microwave, infrared and Raman spectroscopy. For the last 12 years Don's interest has been focused on infrared and Raman micro-spectroscopy and imaging of biological systems, tissue and cells and developed new expertise in low resolution analysis and chemometrics. Don has been involved in building research links with biologists, microbiologists, medical scientists and biochemists in Australia and overseas and this has generated into the multidisciplinary Centre for Biospectroscopy at Monash.
Don's initiatives have given Australia techniques that are at the forefront of developments in medical imaging, diagnosis and new methods in bio-research and brought together a nucleus of researchers capable of excellence in this area. Don and the centre are internationally recognized as leaders in this developing research arena.

Professor Charlie Bond

University of Western Australia
WA

Following an honours degree in chemistry with industrial experience and a PhD in protein crystallography at the University of Manchester, UK, Charlie undertook postdoctoral work studying the structures of medically-relevant enzymes at the University of Sydney (with Prof Mitchell Guss and Prof Hans Freeman) and the University of Dundee, UK (with Prof Bill Hunter). A BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship, and affiliation with the Scottish Structural Proteomics Facility at Dundee allowed Charlie to develop an independent research program studying nucleic acid binding protein complexes, and it is this work he brought to UWA in 2006 to take up a position as Professorial Fellow in Structural Biology in the School of Biomedical, Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences. Charlie has used numerous crystallography beamlines at SRS Daresbury, Photon Factory, ESRF, APS, and now makes frequent use of remote data collection at the Australian Synchrotron.

Professor Brendan Kennedy

University of Sydney
NSW

Brendan has played a major role in the development of the powder diffraction facilities at the Australian National Beamline Facility since its inception in 1993 and served on the Photon Factory Specialist committee of the Australian Synchrotron Research Program. At various stages he has been a member of the Powder Diffraction Special Interest Group at SPring-8, the National Scientific Advisory Committee for the Australian Synchrotron, Chair of the AINSE Neutron Scattering Specialist Committee, President of the Society of Crystallographers in Australia and New Zealand, and President of the Australian Neutron Beam Users Group. In addition to publishing over 200 referred papers on structural studies of inorganic materials Brendan has given invited talks at a number of international conferences, including the American Chemical Society, the International Conference on Neutron Scattering, The Japanese Crystallographic Society, and The Asian Society of Crystallographers.

Dr Bridget Ingham

Industrial Reseach Ltd
NZ

Bridget Ingham has been involved in conducting synchrotron experiments at several different facilities since 2005 (including APS, AS, NSLS, SPring-8, and SSRL). During 2006-7 she was based at SSRL as a post-doctoral fellow. She is now a research scientist at Industrial Research Limited specialising in synchrotron techniques, including XRD, SAXS, and XAS. Since 2007 she has also been the Technical Director for the New Zealand Synchrotron Support Programme.

Dr Mark Ridgway

Australian National University
ACT

Mark Ridgway is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Electronic Materials Engineering, Research School of Physics and Engineering, at the Australian National University. His research interests include the processing and characterisation of technologically relevant materials and span semiconductors, metals and insulators. He combines transmission electron microscopy with synchrotron-based XAS and SAXS measurements for the study of materials in crystalline, nanocrystalline and amorphous forms.

Dr Hugh Harris

University of Adelaide
SA

Dr Hugh Harris is an ARC Queen Elizabeth II fellow and senior lecturer in inorganic chemistry in the School of Chemistry and Physics at the University of Adelaide. He obtained his PhD in chemistry at the University of New South Wales in 2000, before taking a postdoctoral position at Stanford University in 2001. In 2003, he was awarded an Australian Synchrotron Research Program postdoctoral fellowship, undertaken at the University of Sydney where he worked until moving to Adelaide in 2007. He currently serves on the microspectroscopy and CDI/ STXM branchline beamline advisory panels and is the chair of the South Australian Synchrotron Committee.
His research interests include bioinorganic chemistry/metals in biology and environmental toxicology and the application of synchrotron-based techniques in those areas.

Dr Rob Knott

ANSTO
NSW

Robert Knott is a Principal Research Scientist and SAXS Instrument Scientist at ANSTO. He has a BSc and MSc from the University of Newcastle and a PhD in Biophysics from the University of NSW. His interest in small angle X-ray and neutron scattering techniques began in the late 1980's at the NSLS X12B beamline investigating the binding of the immunosuppressant cyclosporin-A to the receptor cyclophilin. Since then he has carried out SAXS experiments at ChemMatCARS (APS USA), ESRF (France) SRS (UK) and the Photon Factory (Japan). He designed and built the first SANS instrument in Australia including the large 2D detector, and has since carried out SANS experiments at NIST (USA), HMI (Germany), LLB (France) and Risoe National Laboratory (Denmark). His main research interest is the structure of biological molecules, however over recent years he has been involved in a diverse range of research projects from polymers, metals, foods and nanocomposites, to oil recovery and mineral processing.

Dr Peter Kappen

La Trobe University
VIC

Peter is working as researcher and Synchrotron User Community Developer and Liaison at La Trobe University. He completed his PhD in 2002 at the synchrotron HASYLAB in Hamburg, Germany (multi-element fluorescence detectors, XAFS, catalysis research). He then continued as a beamline scientist at one of the facility's XAFS beamlines (2002/03). A Post-doctoral Fellowship Award brought Peter to the Department of Physics at La Trobe University (2003) where he has since worked in various roles involving synchrotron users from research and industry. Peter has conducted beamtimes at the Australian Synchrotron and at light sources in Switzerland (SLS), Taiwan (NSRRC), Japan (Photon Factory), and Germany (HASYLAB, ANKA, BESSY). For his projects, he has extensively used XAFS and micro-XRF, as well as XRD, PEEM, and XPS.

Dr Helen Blanchard

Griffith University
QLD

In 2002, Helen Blanchard joined the Institute for Glycomics at Griffith University to establish a research group in structural biology. Her research interests are focused on molecular structure, including the determination of protein structure by X-ray crystallography, the analysis of molecular interactions as well as the application of this information to understanding protein function and for structure based drug design. Dr Blanchard has extensive experience in synchrotron data collection and determination of crystallographic structures using Molecular replacement, Multiple-wavelength isomorphous (MIR) and Multi-wavelength anomalous diffraction (MAD). She was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2006), in recognition of her contribution to structural biology and chemistry research.

Dr Stephen Best

Melbourne University
VIC

For the last 10 years Stephen Best has been a member of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne with primary research interests centered on the structural and (bio)catalytic properties of the transition metals. His synchrotron-based work has centered on the development of approaches that permit the characterisation of reactive electrogenerated compounds by spectroscopic and computational methods. In addition to the X-ray spectroscopy beamline, his work also has involved structural characterization of crystalline materials (using PX1) and the analysis of pigments from paint fragments (IR microscope). Stephen is also a member of the X-ray spectroscopy BAP.

Dr Jamie Quinton

Flinders University
SA

Jamie, a Senior Lecturer in Physics and Nanotechnology at Flinders University has been to the Australian Sychrotron (AS) as a user (in May 08) to perform experiments. Aside from the previous experience during 2008-2 at the AS, he did his postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Ted Madey at Rutgers University in the USA during 2000-1, where his role was to lead the research group's synchrotron research. At that time, Professor Madey was one of the two principal research team (PRT) members of beamline U4A at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), Brookhaven National Lab (BNL), and thus as one of the two postdocs who were the primary users of the beamline, Dr Quinton spent approximately 50% of his time at the synchrotron.