Tuesday April 10, 2018, 8 pm Royal Society Room
The development of smart phones and smart watches and our always-connected lifestyle has meant that we are able to obtain information about a myriad of things in an instant of a second. You can find out where the closest restaurant is, get directions from your current location, and even an estimation of the calorific value of the food by taking a photo. But it can’t tell you whether the fish on your plate is safe to eat, nor whether the water is safe to drink. To do this, we need an entirely new generation of sensors, that requires transferring the measurement from the lab out into our life. Over the past 20 years, Professor Breadmore has focused on simplifying the chemical processes involved in such measurements for therapeutics, pollutants and explosives, and the ways in which this type of technology can be made to increase the likelihood of commercial uptake and the development of products. It is a long path, with many remaining challenges and problems to solve, but sometime in our lifetimes, there will be something to measure what you want to know right now.
Professor Michael Breadmore was born and educated in Tasmania, graduating from the University of Tasmania with a PhD in analytical chemistry in 2001 before spending 3 years undertaking postdoctoral research in the US (University of Virginia), Switzerland (University of Bern) and the United Kingdom (deltaDOT). He returned to Australia and Tasmania as an ARC Postdoctoral fellow (2004-2008) which led to an ARC QEII Fellowship (2009-2013) and an ARC Fellowship (2014-2017), all within the Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (ACROSS). He has made significant contributions to the field of analytical chemistry over the past 20 years to simplify the design and fabrication of portable analytical technology and applying these to challenging current and emerging analytical problems facing society.
Lecture at 8 pm Royal Society Room, TMAG Customs House building. Enter through Dunn Place car park and look for the RST banners at the entrance.
