Polymers as Therapeutics and Diagnostics

Dr Rona Chandrawati graduated with a BSc (Biotechnology) from Monash University and obtained her PhD from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The University of Melbourne in 2012. She was then a Marie Curie Fellow at Imperial College London before returning to Australia in 2015 as a Lecturer at The University of Sydney. In 2018, she joined UNSW School of Chemical Engineering as a Senior Lecturer and Scientia Fellow.

• PhD, The University of Melbourne, 2012
• Marie Curie Fellow, Imperial College London, 2012-2015
• Lecturer, The University of Sydney, 2015-2017
• ARC DECRA Fellow, The University of Sydney and UNSW, 2017-2020
• Senior Lecturer, UNSW, 2018-
• Scientia Fellow, UNSW, 2018-

She heads the Nanotechnology for Food and Medicine Laboratory and her research interests include:

• colorimetric nanosensors for disease diagnosis, food safety and environmental monitoring
• enzyme-like catalysts for drug delivery
• bioengineering synthetic mimics of cells

Since 2012, she has successfully attracted over AUD 2M in competitive funding as a Lead Chief Investigator + AUD 5M in funding as a co-Chief Investigator. She published in high impact journals including Science, Advanced Materials, Advanced Science, Chem, Nano Letters, ACS Nano with >1900 citations.

Dr Chandrawati is an Academic Editor for PLOS One and serves in the World Economic Forum Global Future Council in Biotechnology and World Economic Forum’s Expert Network.

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Dr. Guosong Chen got her BA in Chemistry Department, Nankai University, China. She stayed in the same department and got her Ph. D in 2006, working on supramolecular chemistry. Then she did her postdoc work in Chemistry Department, Iowa State University, which was about synthetic carbohydrate antigens and microarray. In 2009, she joined Prof. Ming Jiang’s group as a lecturer in Department of Macromolecular Science at Fudan University. Then she was promoted to associate professor in Oct. 2011, then full professor in Dec. 2014. Right now, she teaches two undergraduate courses, including “sweet chemistry” and “glycochemistry and glycobiology (in English)”. Now she serves as an Associate Editor of ACS Macro Letters, advisory board member of Polymer Chemistry, Bioconjugate Chemistry, Polymer International, Jounal of Macromolar Science, Part A. She was elected as Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in Dec. 2016.

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Prof. Dr.-Ing. Laura De Laporte is specialized in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering with expertise in biomaterials, tissue engineering, gene therapy, drug delivery, nerve regeneration and angiogenesis. Her research group focuses on the development and fabrication of biomaterials for tissue regeneration. In vivo, cells are surrounded by the extracellular matrix (ECM), providing mechanical and biological support for cells. Hydrogels are soft, water-rich, polymeric networks that can be surgically injected in a minimal invasive manner and gel in situ. Their physical, mechanical, chemical, and biological properties can be modified on a molecular level, which makes them ideal candidates to mimic the ECM, support cell growth, and deliver therapeutic factors. The goal is to engineer materials to template complex tissues with organized biological functions, physical organization, and mechanical properties.

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Amanda obtained a BSc with First Class Honours in Chemistry from the University of Queensland in 2011, with her final year project within the lab of Assoc. Prof. Kristofer Thurecht and Prof. Andrew Whittaker. She completed her PhD in 2015 in the same lab, with her thesis focused on the synthesis of targeted hyperbranched polymers via RAFT polymerisation for in vivo imaging and drug delivery towards prostate cancer. She then moved to the group of Prof. Cameron Alexander at the University of Nottingham in 2016 as a Research Fellow, where she focused on the design, synthesis and characterisation of bespoke novel synthetic polymers through various synthetic strategies (RAFT, ROP etc) for in vivo drug delivery, with a particular interest in how choice of chemistry, architecture and size can be tuned to direct nanoparticle delivery in the body. In 2019, Amanda moved to Birmingham to join the O’Reilly group as a Group Leader.

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Maria Chiara Arno graduated with a PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at King’s College London in 2015, working on the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of peptide analogues of hepcidin. In 2015 she joined the Dove and O’Reilly groups at the University of Warwick to work on the synthesis of polymeric nanoparticles for drug delivery applications. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham working on the development of responsive polymeric carriers.

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Prof. Bruno De Geest graduated as Chemical Engineer in 2003 from Ghent University where he obtained his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences in 2006 on ‘Polyelectrolyte Multilayer Capsules for Pharmaceutical Applications’. For his Phd work he was awarded the graduate student award for pharmaceutical technology from the AAPS and the Andreas Deleenheer award from Ghent University. After 2 years of postdoctoral research at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) he returned to Ghent University at the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Technology. From October 2012 onwards he is appointed as professor in Biopharmaceutical Technology.

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