Message from the Director

December 2020

The Sydney Nano annual retreat was held recently, bringing together the Sydney Nano staff, leadership team, Faculty representatives and key internal stakeholders. I want to thank everyone for their contributions and participation in the retreat, and give special thanks to Prof Kathryn Refshauge for providing a very insightful presentation on the key findings and recommendations for our Y3 review as Chair of the Sydney Nano review panel. This was a highly enjoyable and constructive meeting and I appreciate the good will and positive energy that everyone brought to these sessions.

I would like to acknowledge some recent achievements of the Sydney Nano community by congratulating A/Prof Alice Motion and my research team - Dr. Alvaro Casas Bedoya, Dr. Moritz Merklein, Dr. Eric Magi and Dr. Yang Liu – for winning Eureka Prizes this year. I also congratulate Prof Peter Lay for winning Australian Synchrotron Lifetime Contribution Award; Prof Thomas Maschemeyer for winning AFR Higher Education Award, recognising his research in battery-storage 'living lab'; and all the Sydney Members for their ARC success. Congratulations and well done everyone! I was very pleased to receive the W.H. (Beattie) Steel Medal from the Australian and New Zealand Optical Society.

As the year is drawing to a close, I would like to reflect on our journey in 2020.

The COVID pandemic has certainly impacted us all in the way we work, communicate and collaborate, and I am therefore extremely proud of all the accomplishments we managed to achieve at Sydney Nano during these extraordinary circumstances.

We kicked off the year with a public lecture with Prof Paul Weiss on Nanotechnology Approaches to Biology and Medicine, which led to the establishment of the NanoScope Group, and subsequently, the Sydney NanoHealth Network. I’m really pleased to announce that the Network has attracted philanthropic funding from a generous donor that will sponsor the appointment of a Senior Research Officer in 2021 to support the coordination of the NanoHealth Network (Read about our journey here).

Following the success of the Sydney NanoHealth Network, we are launching two other scoping groups in the Smart Sustainable Buildings and Defence & Aerospace, respectively, before the end of this year, as presented in our recent town hall. We will also introduce a third scoping group – BraiNano – in partnership with the Brain and Mind Centre in early 2021. Please stay tuned.

Our Grand Challenges have been progressing very well, despite the inevitable hindrances posed by the pandemic. Some highlights of their achievements this year include:

The ACWA (Advanced Capture of Water from the Atmosphere) led by Prof Chiara Neto and Prof Martijn de Sterke:
The team won the Bridge Hub Water Challenge Australian Research Stream prize sponsored by the CSIRO and will receive $25,000 to develop their system. The team has set up new apparatus on the roof of the Sydney Nanoscience Hub to measure passive cooling performances 24 hours a day, with a weather station for monitoring the weather status.
CO ₂ Zero led by A/Prof Jun Huang and Prof Cathy Stampfl:
Jun’s team created a new material that has the potential to reduce CO₂ emissions released during the refinement process of crude oil by up to 28 percent, published in Nature Communications. He was named one of Australia’s Most Innovative Engineers in 2020.
Unlocking the neural interface led by Prof Gregg Suaning and Prof Zdenka Kuncic:
Zdenka received the Fulbright Senior Scholarship to research cognitive learning through a nanotechnology device that mimics the human brain’s neural network at UCLA early this year. The Postdoctoral Researcher working on the Grand Challenge, Dr Shiyang (Shayna) Jia, has been awarded the SPARK 2020 award which is $15,000, as well as the ECR Runner-up prize in the Drug Delivery Initiative (DDI).
Safe-by-des ign nanotechnolog y led by A/Prof Wojciech Chrzanowski and A/Prof Liz New:
The team won the Aspect Bioscience grant: 2020 RX1 Bioprinter Grant Program and published multiple publications including a Nanoscale Advances paper on nanodiamond applications in biomedical imaging and drug delivery and a Metallomics paper on studies of the labile lead pool.
Nanorobotics for health led by Dr Shelley Wickham and Dr Anna Waterhouse:
Shelley has also won a Partnership Collaboration Award to collaborate with the University of Glasgow on ‘Self-assembling optical metasurfaces for ultrasensitive diagnostics’, and her team has published a paper on Complex multicomponent patterns rendered on a 3D DNA-barrel pegboard in Nature Communications.
Computational materials discovery led by A/Prof Ivan Kassal and Dr Lamiae Azizi:
Ivan has been awarded the Australian Academy of Science Le Févre Medal, recognising his inspiring research in computational chemistry.

We have had really good engagement with our community through our online events. Some of the highlights include:

Fireside chat with Prof Tony Weiss on his commercialisation story (facilitated by Prof Jim Rabeau)
Stories that inspire with Prof Marcela Bilek and Prof Hala Zreiqat on the success stories of their academic journeys (facilitated by Prof Anita Ho-Baillie);
Sydney Nano-BINA joint e-workshop that helped identify opportunities for collaborations between the two institutes (facilitated by A/Prof Wojciech Chrzanowski);
Distinguished Lecture on Semiconductor Nanomaterials for neural interfaces presented by Prof John Rogers (facilitated by Dr Omid Kavehei);
Live from the Lab – a co-production between FBi Radio and the Nanosonic Stories Catalyst Team (led by A/Prof Alice Motion) during Science Week; and
Sydney Nano recently participated in an international virtual workshop on Nanotechnology for a Sustainable Future organised by our partner, Waterloo Institute of Nanotechnology (coordinated by A/Prof Wojciech Chrzanowski).

There have also been some excellent collaborations across multiple portfolios, such as

Nano Foods seminars with Prof David Julian McClements hosted by A/Prof Wojciech Chrzanowski and A/Prof Alice Motion in partnership with the Centre for Advanced Food Enginomics;
Dr Cathy Foley’s Quantum Sensing talk hosted by Prof Jim Rabeau and Dr Omid Kavehei; and
a very successful COVID-19 Sensor Co-design Workshop facilitated by Prof Allison Tong as a collaboration between Sydney Nano and MBI (led by Prof Tania Sorrell), and members of the Sydney Nano COVID-19 Sensor Taskforce.

I want to thank the great work done by our Deputies who have managed the portfolios and have been wonderful colleagues: Jim Rabeau, Alice Motion, Wojciech Chrzanowski, Anita Ho-Ballie and Omid Kavehei. We will be seeing them again in 2021 with updated and uplifted strategic plans for their portfolios.

I also want to thank the Sydney Nano team who have been fantastic to work with and provide the foundations and operational support for Sydney Nano. The team has worked tirelessly to deliver and operationalize Sydney Nano initiatives throughout the year, in difficult circumstance. I thank Gunther, Trudy, Eugena, Rex, Thooy and Noella for their commitment and cooperation.

I anticipate an outstanding year in 2021. We will focus on refining our strategy and continuing to deliver initiatives that bring value to our members that establish Sydney Nano as a world leading pre-eminent institute that is changing the world. I look forward to working with everyone.

Have a safe and happy holiday season with your families, and see you in 2021, hopefully in the 3D!

Professor Ben Eggleton
Sydney Nano Director