Friday, 18 August 11:00am – 12:00pm

This seminar will be delivered in Chemistry Lecture Theatre 2 and Online (Zoom) Please email chemistry.researchsupport@sydney.edu.au for zoom link and password.

Speaker: Professor Andrew Goodwin, Oxford University

Host: Prof Anthony Masters

Title: Simple ingredients, complex structures

Abstract: A key challenge in modern materials chemistry is how to control structural complexity through rational design, and in due course how to exploit this complexity to produce new and interesting materials with new and interesting properties. This talk will focus on two recent stories from the group in which relatively simple geometric considerations play a central role in stabilising very unusual architectures. The first – a study carried out in collaboration with Prof. Cameron Kepert and his team – concerns a new metal–organic framework known as TRUMOF-1, the structure of which is related to the aperiodic patterns found in so-called “Truchet” tilings [1]. And the second study is a reinterpretation of the structure of amorphous calcium carbonate, an important biomineral used by Nature as a precursor in the synthesis of shells and skeletal structures [2].

[1] E. G. Meekel, et al., Science 379, 357 (2023)
[2] T. C. Nicholas, et al., Nature Chem. (in press); arXiv:2303.06178 (2023)

Bio: Professor Andrew Goodwin came to the University in 1997 from Sydney Boys High School, as a Gold Medalist at the 1996 International Chemistry Olympiad.  He obtained his BSc(Hons) and PhD degrees in Chemistry from the University of Sydney, under the supervision of Prof Cameron Kepert in 2002 and 2004, respectively.  He then completed a PhD in Mineral Physics in 2006 at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Prof Martin Dove. From 2004-9 he was a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, then moved to the University of Oxford, as a Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry, becoming Professor in 2014 and Research Professor in 2018.  His research in the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory in Oxford involves inorganic and solid state chemistry and he is the recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Harrison-Meldola (2010), Marlow (2013), Corday-Morgan (2017) and Peter Day (2021) awards.  Prof Goodwin was the inaugural UK Blavatnik Laureate in Chemistry (2018) and he has held both Starting and Advanced Grants from the ERC.  He was a visiting Fellow at the Australian National University in 2007.  Andrew Goodwin was elected FRS in 2023.

Professor Goodwin has senior advisory roles in several Central Facilities and Research Agencies, including the Leverhulme Trust in the UK and Germany’s Max-Plank-Gesellschaft.