Dino Spagnoli Royal Australian Chemical Institute National Congress 2026

Dino Spagnoli

I am the Academic Coordinator for the Bachelor of Philosophy (Honours) program. My primary role includes coordinating the residential program, developing and coordinating individual student curricula, providing comprenhensive pastoral support and coordinating research placements for BPhil students. I am also an Associate Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences. I teach in the chemistry major at all levels in physical chemistry. I supervise PhD and Honours students in the field of computational materials chemistry and chemistry education research. My research interests are in Chemistry Education Research and Computational Chemistry. In Chemistry Education Research I am interesting in the research exploring students self-efficacy in the chemistry laboratory. I design and develop new technologies and research the impact on student learning in the cognitive and affective domain. I am interested in the role of AI in chemistry education. My research interests in this area includes studying the acceptance of AI as instructional videos and providing feedback to students. In Computational Materials Chemistry I am interested in astrochemistry. My group are actively discovering new molecular co-crystals that could be found on the surface of Titan, a moon of Saturn. Titan has a thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane. The cold temperatures and higher atmospheric pressures on Titan means that some chemicals that are a gas on Earth would be a liquid or solid on Titan. Therefore, the minerology on Titan would be vastly different to Earth and we are actively trying to discover more about the surface composition of Titan. I am also interested in simulating the mechanisms of dust formation from oxygen-rich and carbon-rich stars. Dust formation can provide clues on how larger objects in space form.