Biography
Prof. Andrew B. Holmes
Andrew Holmes obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at the University of Melbourne where he worked with Professor L.M. Jackman. His PhD (1971) on heteroannulenes with Franz Sondheimer at University College London was supported by a Shell (Australia) Science Scholarship. The transition to natural products synthesis was made as a result of a postdoctoral spell at the E.T.H. working on the final stages of the synthesis of vitamin B12 with Professor A. Eschenmoser. He was appointed to an assistant lectureship at Cambridge in 1972. In 1977 he gained tenure and was appointed to a lectureship until he took the position of Director of the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis in 1994. He was promoted to a personal Readership in 1995 and to a personal Professorship in 1998. In September 2004 he moved to become Professor of Organic and Polymer Chemistry at Imperial College and in October, 2004 was also appointed ARC Federation Fellow and inaugural VESKI Fellow at the Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne and at CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies. In May 2010, he was appointed as Foreign Secretary of the Australian Academy of Science. He is currently the President of the Australian Academy of Science.
Qualifications
University of Melbourne
- B.Sc. (1st Class Honours, 1964)
- M.Sc. (1967)
- Shell Overseas Science Scholarship (1967-1971)
University College London
- Ph.D. (1971) “Synthesis of Large Ring Conjugated Compounds” (Professor F. Sondheimer)
University of Cambridge
- M.A. (1973)
- Sc.D. (1997)
University of Oxford
- M.A., D.Sc. (2011)
Research Interests
Professor Holmes’ research interests span a range of natural and non-natural synthetic targets. In the natural products area he has concentrated on biologically active piperidine and indolizidine alkaloids, marine cyclic ethers, medium ring unsaturated lactams, and the potential application of these materials to alkaloid synthesis and novel peptidomimetics. A recent interest has been the use of phosphoinositides to probe downstream intracellular signalling processes, where the use of phosphatidyl inositol polyphosphate affinity matrices in collaboration with the Babraham Institute (Cambridge) and the Ludwig Cancer Institute (Melbourne) has revealed many new proteins involved in intracellular signalling pathways.
Professor Holmes developed an interest in conjugated polymers as a result of an interdisciplinary collaboration with the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. This collaboration led to the discovery of the first polymeric light emitting diodes and the subsequent interest in organic and polymeric materials for optoelectronic applications. The current focus of activities is in the development of printed solar cells as large area and low cost sources of renewable energy. The University of Melbourne is the lead partner in the Victorian Organic Solar Cells Consortium (see www.vicosc.unimelb.edu.au) involving Melbourne and Monash universities and CSIRO Future Manufacturing Flagship with industrial partners BlueScope Steel, Securency International, Innovia Films Limited and Robert Bosch SEA. Funding is provided by the Australian Solar Institute (ASI) and the Victorian State Government Departments of Business and Innovation (DBI) and Primary Industries (DPI).
Editorial Contributions
Chairman, Editorial Board of Chemical Communications (2000-2003)
Principal Editor, Journal of Materials Research (1994-2000)
Member, Board of Editors of Organic Syntheses, Inc., (1997-2001).
Associate Editor, Organic Letters (2005- )
Awards
Royal Society Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship, 1993-4
Alfred Bader Award, Royal Society of Chemistry, 1994
Materials Science Award, Royal Society of Chemistry, 1995
Novartis Lectureship, 1998
William G. Dauben Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley, 1999-2000
Elected FRS 11 May, 2000
Elected FinstP, July, 2000
Pfizer Global Research Lecture, University of Toronto, November 2001
Aggarwal Lecturer, Cornell University, May 2002
Wilsmore Visiting Professor, University of Melbourne
Tilden Award and Lecturer, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2003
EU Descartes Prize (co-recipient), 2003
Appointed Member of the Order of Australia (AM), 26 January 2004
Federation Fellowship, Australia 2004-2009
Macro Group UK Medal for Outstanding Achievement, Royal Soc Chem/Soc Chem Ind, 2003
Inaugural Victorian Endowment for Science Knowledge Innovation (VESKI) Fellow, 2004-2009; Continuing VESKI Fellow 2009-
Merck-Karl Pfister Visiting Professorship, MIT, January 2005
Elected Fellow, Australian Academy of Science, 23 March, 2006
Heinlen Hall Lecturer 2006, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, 5-9 June, 2006
Elected Fellow, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, November 2006
Royal Society of Chemistry Merck Research Lectureship, 2007 April-May, 2008
Appointed CSIRO Fellow, 19 September 2008
Merck Lecturer, University of Cambridge, May 2009
Hans Kupczyk Foundation Guest Professor, University of Ulm, November 2009
Robert Robinson Lecturer, University of Oxford, May 2010
Doctor Honoris Causa, Universiteit Hasselt, Belgium, 19th November, 2010
John B Goodenough Award of Royal Society of Chemistry (Materials Chemistry Division), 2011
Newton Abraham Visiting Professor, University of Oxford, 2011
Honorary Fellow, University College London, 5th September, 2012
Royal Medal for applied and interdisciplinary science, The Royal Society, 30th November 2012
Elected MRS Fellow, Materials Research Society, 2 April 2013
Elected Honorary Fellow, Chemical Research Society of India, 11 February, 2013
External Lectures
Nozoe Memorial Lecturer, 15th International Symposium on Novel Aromatic Compounds (ISNA-15), Taiwan, August 2013
The Chemical Record (TCR) Lecturer, Chemical Society of Japan Annual Meeting, March 2013
Newton Abraham Public Lecture, Natural History Museum, University of Oxford, 6 February 2012
John B Goodenough Award Lecture, Materials Chem Div, RSC, University of Birmingham, 14 February, 2012
Invited Lecture, Joint Chinese Chemical Society-RSC Symposium, Sichuan University Chengdu, 14 April 2012
Invited Lecture, IUPAC World Polymer Congress, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, 25 June 2012
Invited Lecture, ACS 244th National Meeting, Philadelphia, Div. Energy and Fuel Cells, 21 Aug 2012
Organic Chemistry Seminar, University of Ulm, 13th Sep 2012
Dillon Steele Lecture, University of Queensland, 27 Sep 2012
H Dudley Wright Foundation Colloquium Lecturer, University of Geneva, 11 – 16 November, 2012
Invited Lecturer, ICMS-RMIT Nanomaterials Workshop, Nehru Centre, Bangalore, 28-29 January, 2013