Dr Wallace Wong is the new organiser of the Organic Chemistry Seminar Series taking over from Dr George Khairallah. The Organic Synthesis Seminar Series invites external speakers as well as members of staff to present their research. It is also a venue for PhD candidate swansong presentations.
Dr Jegadesan Subbiah has been In Germany for the past 2 weeks working with research groups in the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Max Planck Institute of Polymer Research (MPIP) as part of the AAS-BMBF exchange program. At KIT, Dr Subbiah studied the thin film morphology of organic solar cells.
Congratulations to James Banal for receiving the 2nd prize in the Elseiver Chemistry Challenge 2011. Together with RACI and NZIC and in celebration of the International Year of Chemistry 2011, Elsevier invited undergraduate and postgraduate students from Australia and New Zealand to identify a research challenge and create a mini research proposal that would address it.
Dr David Jones and Dr Wallace Wong travelled to Wuhan, China to attend the China-Australia Symposium on Optoelectronic Materials and Devices. The aim of the symposium was to enhance awareness of research activities in this emerging area in the two countries and identify future collaborations. The institute involved in the symposium included the University of Melbourne, Monash University, CSIRO, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Science Institute of Chemistry.

Welcome to Dr Rohan John Kumar who joins the Holmes research group as a research fellow in the synthesis of organic electronic materials.
Dr Vivien Mengxin Yin and Mr Mark Gregory, of the Holmes research group, have been allocated financial support from the Electors to the Newton Abraham Visiting Professorship as part of Prof. Andrew Holmes’ tenure as Newton Abraham Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. Both Vivien and Mark will spend one month collaborating with the research group of Dr Stuart Conway at the University of Oxford, early in 2012, each under the title of Newton Abraham Visiting Scholar.
We are sad to say goodbye to Dr Susira Perera, who has been working with the group as an Endeavour Research Fellow. Susira is now heading back to the Open University of Sri Lanka after spending six months in the Holmes research group working on device fabrication. It has been a pleasure to have Susira with us and we hope to continue to work in partnership in future activities.
Dr Wallace Wong has been promoted to Research Fellow Level B following his appointment as ASI Research Fellow.
Our latest continuous flow synthesis paper ‘Continuous Flow Synthesis of Conjugated Polymers’ has just appeared in ChemComm (http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/CC/C1CC14315H). The communication presents our preliminary studies on the application of continuous flow methods to some common polymerization reactions, including Suzuki and Stille polycondensation and the Gilch reaction, to obtain conjugated materials. This article is a part of the Emerging Investigator issue. Congratulations Wallace!
Welcome to Hiroyuki Fujita who is on a student exchange program from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Hiroyuki is a 2nd year PhD student and will be with us until the end of November. He will be working on polymeric materials for organic solar cells.