MCN Visited By Professor Lord Alec Broers

Professor Lord Alec Broers

As part of his recent return to Australia, former Cambridge Vice Chancellor and University of Melbourne alumnus Professor Lord Alec Broers visited the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication on June 23. After a brief welcome and morning tea, Lord Broers took a tour of the facility before sitting down with MCN staff and users for an informal discussion of the research areas being explored at the centre. It was a unique opportunity to engage in a meeting of the minds with such an accomplished individual, who is widely credited as one of the founders of modern nanotechnology. Lord Broers showed a great deal of interest in the research being performed by MCN users, and a wide range of topics was discussed, covering water purification, nanotube-based drug delivery, organic photovoltaics, polymer electronics, microfluidics and more.

Lord Broers discussed some of the areas he currently focuses on, with bio-nano interfaces and nanomedicine being of particular interest. He also mentioned that he was impressed at the node-based organisation of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (of which MCN is the Victorian node), in contrast to his own experiences in decades past, when numerous nanotechnology research organisations in the UK had no unified strategy. Overall, it was a fascinating morning and an exciting discussion. Lord Broers went on to present a seminar at Monash that afternoon, during which he referred to MCN as a "marvellous laboratory," with "very exciting things going on."

27th June 2011