June 27, 2025
Professor Richard Payne FRSN FAA FRACI FRSC, the Professor of Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology at the University of Sydney, has been awarded an ARC Laureate Fellowship, in an announcement from the Australian Research Council on 26 June 2025.
The Laureate Fellowship is the most prestigious individual award granted by the Australian Research Council and provides research support that includes a contribution towards a professorial salary, funding for two postdoctoral research associates and two postgraduate researchers, and up to $300,000 per year in project expenses for five consecutive years.
Professor Payne was awarded $3.904 million for a project titled ‘Unlocking the Modified Proteome’. In this project, Professor Payne aims to uncover how protein modifications influence biological activity. This project will develop automated technologies to produce modified proteins with high precision and scale, enabling new insights into major protein classes. The research will support the development of novel therapeutics and antimicrobial molecules and transform how high-value proteins are made. Its outcomes will benefit Australia’s biotech and pharmaceutical sectors and will build workforce capacity through training and industry partnerships.
Professor Payne was the recipient of the 2020 RSNSW Liversidge Lecture and was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2023. He is an international leader in the fields of organic chemistry and chemical biology and is recognised for pioneering a number of technologies for accessing precisely modified peptides and proteins for applications in biology and medicine. Amongst the awards that he has received during his career are the Prime Minister’s Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year in 2016, and the HG Smith and AJ Birch Medals of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 2019.
The Council of the Royal Society of NSW extends its warm congratulations to Richard Payne on both an outstanding career and this outstanding achievement, and wishes him every success in his research during the coming five years.
