Ramsay Fellowship Seminars
- Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2021, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Location: Online
- Cost: FREE
- Chaired by Interim Executive Dean - Professor Laura Parry
Hear about exciting research happening in the Faculty of Sciences from our Ramsay Fellows.
This research seminar will take place via Zoom at 2pm on Thursday 2nd December 2021. All are welcome.
The Ramsay Fellowships support outstanding young Australian scientists to realise their potential as scientific leaders at the University of Adelaide.
Current Fellows Dr Fiona Whelan and Dr James Quach will update on their on-going research in this webinar.
We will also meet our newly appointed Ramsay Fellows, Dr Jack Evans and Dr Gabriel Collin, who will give a short presentation to introduce themselves to the Faculty.
Fiona Whelan has over a decade of experience in protein engineering and structural biology research, predominantly conducted at the York Structural Biology Laboratory, UK.
Her research is focused on the evolution of bacterial small molecule binding proteins for application in biosensing. The utility of a broader range of proteins for biosensor development is currently under investigation, incorporating enzymes, transcription factors and small molecule sensors sourced from bacteria and plants.
Biosensors are currently in development for industrial applications in winemaking, agriculture, environmental management and plastics bioremediation.
James Quach and international collaborators aimed to provide the first experimental demonstration of a prototype quantum battery.
Quantum batteries utilise quantum mechanical principles to enhance capabilities compared to classical batteries. They exhibit an intriguing property where charging time is inversely related to capacity, i.e., larger batteries take less time to charge.
In a major milestone, the team have experimentally demonstrated this property for the first time. Their work provides new insights into what constitutes a viable quantum battery and shows that a practical quantum battery cannot solely rely on quantum mechanical behaviour.
Jack Evans completed his PhD at the University of Adelaide (2016) and relocated to Europe to join research groups at Chimie ParisTech, France, and then TU Dresden, Germany.
There, he developed atomistic simulations to investigate exciting materials with counterintuitive physical or chemical properties. In particular, these materials feature fascinating properties that go beyond the limits of conventional materials to provide outstanding performance in important applications, such as gas separation and storage.
The Ramsay Fellowship has brought Jack back to the University of Adelaide to establish a new research direction, which uses these innovative simulation methods to design advanced heterogeneous catalysts that can surpass the performance status quo of traditional systems.
Gabriel Collin graduated from the Bachelor of Philosophy program at the Australian National University, before moving to the United States to pursue a PhD in experimental particle physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was then employed as a postdoctoral associate at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT where he developed a new statistical method for describing point sources - which are common in astrophysical data.
Gabriel will investigate astrophysical phenomena using novel statistical and machine learning methods. He aims to develop new data analysis techniques for determining the origin of gamma-rays that are emanating from the centre of our galaxy. These techniques will determine if the observed gamma-rays are created by dark matter, or by an as-yet unknown population of objects such as pulsars.