Welcome New Members Update - August 2021
New Member Interviews
Stephanie Chua
How did you learn about RACI?
I first knew of RACI way back during my undergraduate days in the Philippines after participating in the 2006 RACI international quiz competition. There were only two thoughts in my mind back then about RACI: (1) it is a prestigious international chemistry association, and (2) the questions they pose in the competition are hard!
Why did you decide to join RACI?
RACI brings together brilliant minds in different subdisciplines of chemistry. In joining I will have the chance to connect and learn more from my fellow students, early career researchers, and established researchers in my fields of interest. Also, I believe joining RACI opens the door for more opportunities as I advance forward in my chosen career.
What degree program are you studying?
I am currently pursuing my PhD in Chemical Engineering at UNSW but make no mistake – I am and will always be a chemist! For my PhD, I am fabricating solid-state hybrid polymer electrolytes for lithium metal batteries, with concentration on ion conduction in these electrolyte composites.
What made you get into chemistry?
I must credit my love for chemistry to my high school chemistry teacher, Mrs. Polly Rivera, who inspired me to pursue my passion for the sciences. The laboratory experiments we performed back in school, such as creating slime from borax, soap-making, ice cream from liquid nitrogen – all of these ignited a ceaseless curiosity and led me to pursue chemistry, first as a degree and then as a career.
Do you use chemistry in your everyday life? If so, how?
At work, I prepare solid state electrolytes for lithium metal batteries for my research, and it entails a lot of knowledge of polymer and solid-state chemistries to understand the complex interactions within the electrolyte composites. After work, I still use a lot of chemistry – specifically understanding the Maillard reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars as I prepare my fried chicken dinner!
Do you have a favourite reagent or a reaction?
I would have to say sodium borohydride – I used to work with a lot of reduction reactions and have always been fascinated with the bubbling effect brought about by the addition of this reagent. Another favourite of mine is the Piranha solution – seemingly harmless but packs a lot of oxidising strength!
What do you like to do outside of chemistry?
Outside the laboratory I am an avid bushwalker, swimmer, and a foodie that can be seen roaming around Sydney in search for the best ramen/coffee/brunch place in town (pre-COVID of course).
How can the RACI help you in your current role?
I am starting to wrap-up my PhD studies and am actively searching for a career in the chemistry community, especially in research and chemistry education. I believe there is no shortage of help and career opportunities from the conferences, webinars, and networking events that RACI organises.
Carly Baker
How did you learn about RACI?
I learned about RACI during my undergraduate chemistry years. The lecturers are always promoting it. During my honours year, I attended the polymer summer school through RACI at the University of Sydney. I thought it was cool that there were so many people who came together to share, learn, and teach polymer science, and there was specialist group dedicated to this.
Why did you decide to join RACI?
My research faculty is multidisciplinary: We have many academics and student engineers, biologists, material scientists, chemists and physicists working on electromaterials. As a result, most of our seminars and presentations are based on electromaterials and 3D printing. While it is wonderful to learn about different areas of research, I would like to hear more from organic chemists and polymer chemists. I find chemistry the most interesting science and the seminars that I currently attend do not focus on chemistry of their work. I feel RACI will give me an opportunity to connect with like-minded chemists with similar scientific aspirations, as well as an opportunity to view what people are doing in my field of interest.
What degree program are you studying?
I am currently in my second year of PhD at the University of Wollongong with the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute. My PhD project involves developing conducting polymers for applications in bioelectronics. Briefly, current implantable devices such as pacemakers usually have lifetimes of up to 10 years. The devices tend to fail overtime due to the formation of scar tissue around the device. This results in expensive and painful procedures to remove and replace the device. Therefore, my PhD project tries to address this problem by synthesising biocompatible conducting polymers that could potentially coat the device to prolong or prevent the formation of scar tissue.
What made you get into chemistry?
Prior to undergraduate years, I had no chemistry knowledge. Some guy told me during the subject selection session to choose chemistry because it was useful for most sciences, and I also needed it for molecular biology (I thought this would be my major).
My philosophy was that I will keep doing the subjects I get the best marks in. Up to second year, I was doing chemistry, math, and pharmacology. However, math started getting harder and pharmacology was way too writing- and essay-focused. Chemistry was the right balance of writing and math. It also seemed multidisciplinary because there was some biology, physics, math and pharmacology involved.
As a result, I ended up majoring in chemistry. Not only was it the easiest subject for me to understand, but also a subject I enjoyed studying and the assignments were not too hard. Once you finish a lab report, that was it and I didn’t have to go back and redo or restudy it. I also really enjoyed the vibes in chemistry. The subjects were great – I don’t recall ever falling asleep in a lecture which I tended to do a lot, my peers were helpful, and the teaching staff were amazing too.
Do you use chemistry in your everyday life? If so, how?
Everyone uses chemistry in their daily life. One prime example is that I use chemistry to extract coffee every morning, afternoon and (sometimes) evening. (Yes I know it’s pretty bad to drink so much coffee, sorry!). It is the simplest chemistry. As hot water passes through coffee grinds, it dissolves the caffeine among other components and is filtered into the mug. There are just so many elements of chemistry in just 20 seconds!!
Do you have a favourite reagent or a reaction?
I quite enjoy the Grignard metathesis polymerisation reactions. While they can be frustrating if not properly executed, it is a very useful method of forming regioregular polymers. It is a great manipulation of chemistry to produce macromolecules for a wide range of purposes.
What do you like to do outside of chemistry?
I enjoy most things outdoors. I often spend my weekends exploring Illawarra and surrounds by myself and with friends. The things that I do the most outside of chemistry and the lab (even during COVID-19 lockdowns) are running, swimming, and climbing. That is one of the perks of living in Wollongong. I can do an ocean swim; trail run and go rock climbing all on the same day. I live just 30 minutes by running (10 minutes by car) to the mountain (probably an hour on foot to the summit of Mt Keira) and a 5-minute walk to the beach. It’s the most perfect place to be doing my PhD.
How can the RACI help you in your current role?
RACI inspires me. I really enjoy listening to panel-like seminars as they motivate me to want to do better with my career and life after PhD. RACI also provides comfort that I do not have to stay in academia and that there are so many other opportunities that may await me when I finish, particularly in entrepreneurship, innovation, and commercialisation. I also think that RACI can provide me with a way to connect with people and further my knowledge in polymer science and in other areas of chemistry such as organic and materials.
Keshav Curriman
Why did you decide to join RACI?
The main reason I decided to join RACI is that the organisation provides ample opportunities to communicate with and to learn from various industry experts, to hear about their experiences in industry and research, and to participate in site visits. All these will enhance my learning experiences and will help me develop in my current and future careers.
What is your current occupation?
I currently work as a Research and Development Chemist at Autopak-Vetlab Group, where I look after agricultural and veterinary products. Autopak is a contract manufacturing company that produces agricultural products, such as fertilisers, herbicides and rodenticides. Vetlab, on the other hand, is involved in the manufacturing of animal health pharmaceuticals. As part of my job, I help in the formulation and testing of new products as per customer requirements.
What made you get into chemistry?
I love challenges and studying Chemistry meant dealing with new challenges every day. I completed my degree in Advanced Science at Macquarie University. Studying Chemistry was rewarding, exciting and fun and the basic knowledge of Chemistry made me want to explore the area further. I feel Chemistry is the connecting science between Physics, which deals with the vastness of the universe, and Biology, which specialises in understanding our nature. I really like how Chemistry is the one field of science which could one day help explain how living entities came to be from non-living objects.
Do you use chemistry in your everyday life? If so, how?
I believe chemistry is highly involved in our daily lives. It can be as simple as washing our hands, where we must wet our hands first, to make sure the wetting agents in the soap function as required; or even boiling an egg where proteins are denatured, which then causes hardening of the egg white.
Do you have a favourite chemical reaction?
My favourite chemical reaction is the Tollens’ test. This test is used to differentiate between an aldehyde and a ketone. Tollens’ reagent is prepared by adding aqueous ammonia drop-by-drop to a mixture of aqueous silver nitrate and sodium hydroxide, and the difference between an aldehyde and a ketone is that aldehyde will be oxidised to carboxylic acid and will generate a silver deposit, while ketone will remain unchanged. I especially like it when the deposit covers a large surface area of a glass to give an actual silver mirror.
What do you like to do outside of chemistry?
I also have an interest in Biology and Astronomy. I mostly like observing nature: animals and the stars. I watch a lot of documentaries, especially those narrated by Sir David Attenborough.
How can the RACI help you in your current role?
I am hoping to establish more connections and learn from others to expand my knowledge and grow as an individual in the Chemical industry.
Kathy Tou
How did you learn about RACI?
I've known about RACI for a few years now from friends and professors who are a part of RACI. When I first heard of RACI, friends were telling me it was just a networking base, therefore I was a bit intimated in joining. However, having attended a few RACI events (i.e., Women in Chemistry breakfasts and watching a presentation one of my friends participated in) after the initial introduction to RACI, it was a welcoming environment filled with members that were very interested in what you did and how it contributed to the chemistry scene. Therefore, I made the choice to join the RACI.
Why did you decide to join RACI?
I decided to join RACI more to network with other people in addition to hearing presentations and talks from professional members of RACI.
What degree program are you studying?
I'm currently a PhD candidate at the University of Technology Sydney completing a project involving the use of lipidomics to detect for doping in equine plasma. This project is done in collaboration with Racing NSW and Shimadzu Scientific Instruments.
What made you get into chemistry?
My Bachelor degree is in Forensic Sciences with Applied Chemistry and I got into chemistry as I had a very good teacher back in high school that really motivated me to do well and with her teaching style, really got me understanding chemistry and how it applies to our everyday life.
Do you use chemistry in your everyday life? If so, how?
As a PhD student in the Drugs and Toxicology Research Group at UTS, I do use chemistry most days now! It's mainly analytical chemistry now since I use an LC-HRMS, so usually it's a lot of fragmentation pattern predictions or sample preparation involving solid phase extractions or liquid-liquid extractions.
Do you have a favourite reagent or a reaction?
As my work is mainly analytical, I don’t personally have a favourite reaction. However, my favourite reagent is probably MS grade methanol (especially as I use a high-resolution instrument). It’s such a versatile reagent that you can never really go wrong with diluting in MeOH at least for the compounds I use.
What do you like to do outside of chemistry?
Outside of chemistry, a few hobbies of mine include completing 500-piece puzzles (ideally science based), taking polaroids, and trying new restaurants and cuisines!
How can the RACI help you in your current role?
RACI can help me by expanding my network, I’m currently in my second year of my PhD and whilst my collaborations have dramatically helped with networking, I would like to further expand that.