Wednesday, 8th July Royal Australian Chemical Institute National Congress 2026

Kick-start your conference morning with Coffee Roulette — a casual networking experience connecting delegates over coffee at local cafés near the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, designed to spark new conversations, collaborations and connections across the chemistry community.

Location: TBC - Cafés near the Perth Convention Centre

Career Connect is a dedicated networking initiative designed to help students, early-career researchers, and professionals explore career pathways across academia, industry, government, and research sectors.

Participants will have the opportunity to connect directly with conference sponsors and exhibitors, learn about career opportunities, gain insights into different organisations, and discuss skills, recruitment pathways, and professional development with experienced representatives. A dedicated meeting space is be available for more in-depth conversations and networking throughout the Congress.

• Chemical biology in repositioning human kinase inhibitors for malaria - Kelly Chibale
• TSPO Ligand Design for Universal Imaging of Neuroinflammation - Jonathan J Danon
• New potent and selective anti-Giardia compounds with in vivo efficacy. - Jack H. Ryan

• The weird world of carbon clusters – infrared and electronic spectra of chains, rings and fullerenes - Evan Bieske
• Momentum spectroscopies to investigate the structure of molecules and materials - Darryl B Jones
• Spectator exciton effects in nanocrystals - Sanford Ruhman
• The Polytope Formalism: molecular constitution and multidimensional potential-energy surface encoding - Peter J Canfield

• Combining high frequency dust deposition records and source identification using integrated microanalytical techniques to investigate nuisance dust complaints. - Kathryn L Linge
• 2D and 3D Diffusion-Ordered NMR Spectroscopy Techniques for th Chemical Forensic Profiling of Organophosphorus Nerve Agents - Renee Webster
• Spectroscopy-based process analytical technology in sustainable chemical and paper manufacturing - Sanathri Alwis
• Development of a Multi-wavelength LED‑Based Portable Process Analytical Technology for Monitoring Sustainable Chemical and Paper Manufacturing Processes - Leo Lebanov
• Application of XANES Spectroscopy to Study the Neuro-Metallome in the Mouse Brain - mark j hackett

• Wet Chemical Strategy to Soft Wearable Bioelectronics - Wenlong Cheng
• Water, water everywhere and all the bonds did shrink   - Alexander Yuen
• The Bionic Interface: Considering the Material Mediated Electrical Stimulation of Stem Cells - Amy Gelmi
• Nanostructure and Dynamics of the Locally Concentrated Ionic Liquid 2:1 (wt:wt) HMIM FAP:TFTFE and HMIM FAP on Graphite and Gold Electrodes as a Function of Potential - Rob Atkin
• Multimodal imaging of copper in biological systems - Elizabeth New

• Organic semiconductors for soft neural interfaces: chemistry and capacitance - Jessica M de la Perrelle
• Copper catalysts for electrochemical CO₂ reduction - Kavindya Weerasinghage
• Highly Selective Electrochemical Semi-Hydrogenation Via a Palladium Membrane Reactor - Minghao Sun
• A self-acid-doped and self-cross-linked thiosulfate modified PEDOT - Kristina Fidanovski

• SAFETY DATA SHEETS: An Accurate Hazard Communication Tool or Compliance Exercise? - Lisa J Stevens
• Understanding our Innovation Playing Field - Scott Buckignham
• Dumbing Down Safety Culture in the Chemical Industry - Richard Greenwood
• Regulating Innovation - Brian krieger

• Metal-Organic Frameworks as Chiral Chemical Sensors - Carol Hua
• Surprising new heteroatom binding motifs of porphyrins and related tetradentate macrocycles - Maxwell J Crossley
• Electron transfer within and through molecules: A Moore-or-less coordinated approach   - Paul Low
• Metal complexes, organofluorides, and other things in-between  - Todd A Gillam
• Did you calculate your pKa value correctly? - Marcus Korb

• Activating Dess-Martin Periodinane and IBX Analogues Towards Heterocycle and Arene Oxidation - Jason A Smith
• Natural Products as Blueprints for Next Generation Therapeutics - Rohan A Davis
• Developing modular synthetic routes to variolin B analogues and the related pyrrolopyrimidines - Iliya Dragutinovic
• Isolation of Bioactive Metabolites from Western Australian Marine Sponges - Gavin R Flematti
• Shedding light on the dark metabolome: Case studies in the identification of new and known chemical matter discovered via untargeted ¹H NMR metabolomic approaches. - Samuele Sala

This is an invitation only session.

• Structural Instabilities and Emergent Polarity in Photocatalytic BiVO₄ - Brendan J Kennedy
• Advancing Photosynthetic Water Splitting: From Semi-Artificial to Artificial Systems - Huayang Zhang
• Plasma activated Pt Fe₂O₃ nanosheets on Ni foam for enhanced bifunctional water electrolysis - Maheshika Perera
• Electrostatically driven redistribution of a non-redox molecular equilibrium during double-layer crossing - Simone Ciampi
• Electrochemical synthesis of boron-hydrogen compounds for use as solid-state electrolytes in batteries - Mark Paskevicius
• Synthesis of Novel Antipodally Substituted closo Carboranes - Thomas J.C. Carraro

• Manufacturing tough, flexible and fully biodegradable blown film materials from short-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoates: a multi-strategy approach to biopolymer design - Bronwyn Laycock
• Vortex Fluidic Processing Technology - Colin L Raston
• N-Centred Radical-Driven Strategies for Sustainable Oxidation Chemistry - Philip W. H. Chan
• Upcycling of acid-mine drainage for metal-organic framework synthesis - Joshua A Powell
• Stabilizing Phthalocyanine Catalysts via Cobalt–Copper Dual-Metal COFs for CO₂-to-Methanol Electrocatalysis - Mengxin Liu
• Eliminating PFAS solvents from fingermark development processes - Jodie L Harrington

Advancing Battery Research: A Collaborative Workshop on Next-Generation Batteries

Dr. Rama Ghosh

Global Product Manager-Materials Science
A business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

Dr. Rama Ghosh stands at the forefront of materials science innovation as Global Product Manager at Merck, where she spearheads a portfolio, launching high-purity products for electronics, energy, and life science applications. Her strategic expertise drives new product development, technical marketing, business growth, and customer solutions, empowering global industries to advance sustainable technologies like semiconductors, batteries, and nanomaterials.

Before her current role, Dr. Ghosh served as Commercial Marketing Manager and Technical Manager at Merck, India, formulating business plans, conducting gap and competitive analyses, and delivering revenue growth through promotional events and customer seminars. Her leadership earned SPOT Excellence Awards in 2019, 2020 and 2021, Impact Award (2025) for portfolio expansion, bulk business success and for solving problems for customer, while fostering long-term relationships across R&D, Sourcing, Quality, and sales. Her foundation stems from a PhD in Chemistry from IIT Guwahati (2016), focused on gold and copper nanomaterials for Theranostic applications, complemented by an Executive MBA in Marketing from SP Jain School of Global Management (2024). A prolific researcher, she has published in high-impact journals like ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, RSC Advances, earning accolades including the C.N.R. Rao Award (2014) and CSIR & MHRD Fellowships. Skilled in advanced analytics (NMR, TEM, DLS) and green synthesis protocols, she champions precision, sustainability, and interdisciplinary progress.

Her work embodies the spirit of RACI 2026, a fusion of materials innovation, business strategy, and global impact. With over eight years at Merck and deep roots in chemistry and nanotechnology, Dr. Ghosh inspires scientists to harness high-purity materials as a force for sustainable discovery and industrial advancement.

Join us for a series of interactive workshops covering professional development, career pathways, industry engagement, and skills for success.

Wade Petersen - Q&A on “Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Academia"

• From Genomes to Natural Products: Unlocking Microbial Biosynthetic Potential for Health and Food Innovation - Yit Heng Chooi
• Tyrocidine A Variants as Next-Gen Antifungal Drugs - Evelyne Deplazes
• Design, synthesis, and bioevaluation of novel imidazonaphthyridine derivatives as potential antibacterial agents - Siew Fang Wong
• Total synthesis and antimalarial studies of caelestines A–C - Henry Smith
• Utilizing fragment-based drug design to develop a novel class of inhibitors for SARS-CoV-2 papain like protease. - Ashley Taylor
• Aurachin D as an initial lead for inhibitors targeting the electron transport chain in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.  - Allan B Gamble

• Beyond linear response theory in hard-sphere liquids - Charlotte Petersen
• Prediction of Structure, Growth and Properties of Titan surface crystals - Peter Spackman
• High-Pressure Structural Characterisation of the Titanium-oxo-cluster Ti₆O₆(abz)₆(OⁱPr)₆. - Rebecca M Blake
• Structure and transport in polymer electrolytes for electrochemical devices - Tanika Duivenvoorden

• Characterisation of dyes in Magna Carta cord silks by LC-MS-MS - Renee Webster
• Adsorption of phenol from water using green tea (Camellia sinensis L.) leaf waste - Ntaote David ND Shooto
• Detection of ionised forever chemicals by ion-transfer voltammetry - Damien Arrigan
• Measuring 'Sticky' Molybdenum Without HF Via ICP-MS, An Inorganic Chemistry Approach   - Jessica K Bilyj
• Development of a novel analytical method for faecal untargeted metabolomics using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for simultaneous analysis of both volatile and non-volatile compounds in human faeces. - Angelina Nikitkina

• Mass transport through graphene-based nanopores and nanochannels - Rakesh Joshi
• From virgin to recycled: on-demand thermal surface modification for carbon fibers - Manesha Fernando
• Ion-exchange resin beads enabling efficient PFAS capture for utilization in batteries - Zhuojing Yang
• Polymer Coated Microcantilever Resonators for Low Dose X Ray Detection and Biological Sample Monitoring - Samali Liyanaarachchi

• Enabling electrolysis at scale for green metal production and carbon recovery - Jessica Allen
• Rigorous diagnosis for zero-gap membrane-electrode assemblies - Mengran Li
• Improving anode-free zinc batteries with permanent magnets  - William T McLeod
• An entropy-stabilised surface dopant zone enabling durable 4.5 V cycling of Ni-rich NCM811 - Leqi Zhao
• Physics informed machine learning for degradation aware operation of low iridium PEM water electrolysers under intermittent renewable power - Moumita Ms Saha

Speaker One: Amer Magrabi

Speaker Two: Jeff Davis

• From Innovation to Implementation: Managing Chemical Hazards and Fire Safety in a net zero Lithium-Ion battery world - Amer Magrabi

• Buried treasure: harvesting REEs from legacy uranium mine tailings - Kate Flint
• New innovations in redox transmetallation chemistry involving rare earth metals - Peter C Junk
• Chiroptical modulation within supramolecular lanthanoid assemblies - Katelyn Clutterbuck

• Novel DNA-targeting approaches to advance treatment of infectious diseases - Ludovica Monti
• Metal-free access to important N-heterocycles: new routes to indoles and 1,4-benzodiazepin-2-ones - Naresh Kumar
• Enabling synthetic technologies for the construction of sulfated and complex peptides - Andrew M White
• Data-driven and DFT-guided design and experimental validation of hypervalent iodine(V) reagents for selective oxidation - Morteza Jamshidi

This is an invitation only session.

• The Role of Empathy in Tertiary Science Teaching: What do we know and what's yet to be learned?   - Stephen George-Williams
• Redesigning first-year chemistry seminars into active-learning workshops - Pavani Halpelage
• Enhancing the transition to first year practical chemistry through a low stakes introductory activity - Christopher Marsh

• Catalytic Hydrogen Production: From Lab to Real World - Tianyi Ma
• Converting renewable feedstocks into high‑value materials and energy - Lalehvash Moghaddam
• Nanomaterials enhanced mixed matrix membranes and integrated membrane process for wastewater treatment - Zongli Xie
• Sorption and utilization of “Forever Chemicals” in rechargeable batteries - Yutong Zhu
• Interface Engineering for Sustainable Multifunctional Composites - Luke C Henderson

• Radical Mediated Installation of 18F tags into Proteins for Dynamic PET Imaging - Andrew M Giltrap
• Shining Light on Peptide Architectures: Photochemical Elucidation of Structure - Hendrik Frisch
• Chemical Probes for Studying Nucleotide-Binding Proteins - Santosh Rudrawar
• Late-stage on-resin modification of peptide nucleic acids for use in sensing and diagnostics - Emma E Watson

• Molecular cocrystals as a potential source for nitrogen-bearing heterocycles on Titan: Laboratory astrochemistry - Courtney Ennis
• Probing Photocatalytic Activity in Graphitic Carbon Nitride via Single-Molecule Localization Microscopy - Zhengyang Zhang
• Anion photoelectron spectroscopy and computational chemistry of gas phase clusters to target atmospheric reactions. - Duncan A Wild

• Membrane-Based Conductometric Ammonia Sensing System (MCAS) for Real-Time Coastal Monitoring - Ming Zhou
• ANbO3 (A =Na, K, Ag, Li) photocatalysts for organic pollutant degradation - Chantelle Falanga
• The use of diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT) to measure bioavailable uranium in extremely soft water - Claudia CT Tanneberger
• SMART SPRAYS: Water-based, biodegradable films for agriculture - Alexandra Gulizia
• Drug Discovery Using Native MS: Protein-Ligand Complexes and Beyond - Miaomiao Liu

• Materials Innovation for the Excess Sulfur Problem - Justin M. Chalker
• Zero-carbon functional polymers - Haihui Joy Jiang

• Electrochemical Monitoring of Single-Molecule Chiral Recognition - Wenrong Yang
• What We Find in the Noise: Stochastic Electrochemistry as an Analytical Tool to Improve Selectivity and Specificity in Biosensors and Bioelectronics - Sina Jamali
• Unlocking the Potential of Poly(ionic liquid)s as Electrochemical Sensor Materials. - iqra zaman
• Reference electrode drift correction using an electrode array and convolutional autoencoder neural network - David S Macedo

Speaker One: Dr Scott Buckingham - Chemical Industry Executive

Speaker Two: Dr Amer Magrabi - Director, Fire and Risk Engineering

Speaker Three: Dr Brian Krieger - Office of Industrial Regulations

Speaker Four: Dr Jeff Davis - Western Australia Emergency Services

• Exploring carbon carbon bond formation through electrochemically mediated copper catalysis - Thanh Tung Vo
• Electron transfer processes within and through molecules - Daniel M. Mazzucato
• Electrified Prebiotic Synthesis from Abundant Planetary Resources - Yifan Yuan
• High-Entropy Chalcogenides via Ambient and Scalable Synthesis for energy and environmental applications - Guohua Jia

• Strategies for C(sp³)–H Bond Functionalisation Driven by a N-Centred Radical Species - Philip W. H. Chan

• Universal design for assessment - flexible deadline windows to support equity, reduce stress, and improve assessment outcomes. - Vicky G Barnett
• Implementing Deconstructed Questions as Roadblocks and Signposts to Cheating: Are Our Efforts to Improve the Security of Online Assessments Futile? - Giel Muller
• Developing a validated concept inventory creation tool, suitable for any curriculum. - Dylan P. Williams and Richard A.R. Blackburn
• Developing Critical AI Literacy in Inorganic Chemistry: Using Generative AI to Construct Borane Cluster Visualizations - Mai Yan Yuen

• Photocatalytic waste valorization for simultaneous green hydrogen and value-added chemicals - Mahmoud Adel Hamza
• Chiral Metal–Organic Frameworks for Ultrafast All‑Optical Switching - Katelyn Clutterbuck
• Sodium borohydride hydrolysis for global hydrogen export - Terry D Humphries
• CO₂ Electroreduction in Acidic Media - Yong Zhao
• Plasma Chemistry for the Energy and Materials Transition of the Process Industry - Gerardus J van Rooij