Royal Society of NSW Liversidge Lecture
“The journey from simple polymers to nano-footballs: opportunities for better cancer treatment ”
Scientia Professor Martina Stenzel FAA
School of Chemistry, UNSW Sydney
Date: Thursday, 20 February 2020, 5.30pm for 6.00pm
Venue: The Galleries, John Niland Scientia Building, UNSW Sydney
The Royal Society of New South Wales and UNSW Science invite you to the RSNSW Liversidge Lecture, to be be presented by the 2018 awardee, Professor Martina Stenzel FAA. The Liversidge Lecture is awarded at intervals of two years for the purpose of encouraging research in Chemistry. It was established under the terms of a bequest to the Society by Professor Archibald Liversidge MA LLD FRS, who was Professor of Chemistry in the University of Sydney from 1874 to 1907 and was one of the Council members who sponsored the Society’s Act of Incorporation in 1881.
.The journey from simple polymers to nano-footballs: opportunities for better cancer treatment—Professor Stenzel will take the audience on a journey from simple polymers that are widely used for commodity polymers to highly complex nanoparticles that have shapes of footballs, pancakes and bamboo-sticks. These nanoparticle can now be filled with anti-cancer drugs to facilitate the delivery of therapeutic goods into cancer cells. Our main purpose is to understand how the shape and size of these nanoparticle affect the interaction with healthy and cancerous cells.
Scientia Professor Martina Stenzel studied chemistry at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, before completing her PhD in 1999 at the Institute of Applied Macromolecular Chemistry, University of Stuttgart, Germany. She started as a postdoctoral fellow at UNSW in 1999 and is now a full Professor in the school of chemistry as well as co-director of the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design (CAMD) and the ARC training center for chemical industries. Her research interests focus on the synthesis of functional nanoparticles for drug delivery applications. She is interested in exploring the relationship between the structure of the underpinning polymers and the resulting nanoparticle shape and size, which will ultimately influence the biological activity. Martina Stenzel published more than 300 peer reviewed papers on polymer and nanoparticle design. She is scientific editor of Materials Horizons and serves currently on a range of editorial boards. She received a range of awards including the 2011 Le Fèvre Memorial Prize of the Australian Academy of Science. Martina Stenzel is a Fellow of the Academy of Science and is currently chair of the Academy’ National Chemistry Committee.