Aus researcher awarded prestigious analytical science prize

Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh has been awarded the prestigious 2020 Robert Boyle Prize for Analytical Science by the Royal Society of Chemistry, in recognition of his significant influence across multiple fields of engineering.

The Robert Boyle Prize for Analytical Science is awarded for outstanding contributions to analytical science. Presented biennially, the prize awards the winner £5000 and a medal, and is (usually) accompanied by a UK lecture tour. The first recipient of the medal, British–Australian physicist Sir Alan Walsh, was the original inventor of atomic absorption spectroscopy.

Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh is a 2018 Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow and a Professor of Chemical Engineering at UNSW, where he directs the Centre for Advanced Solid and Liquid based Electronics and Optics (CASLEO). Formerly, he was a Distinguished Professor of Electronic Engineering at RMIT University.

Prof Kalantar-zadeh is internationally recognised in materials sciences, electronics and transducer research — in particular for his work on liquid metals and 2D semiconductors and sensors. He has conducted research for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET) with his team at UNSW, collaborating with RMIT to develop the fabrication techniques necessary for advanced devices by using electron and ion beam lithography and other tools for nanodevice fabrication. His work also spans FLEET’s research themes of topological materials and light-transformed materials.

His research has resulted in the development of new devices including innovative pollution sensors, transistors, medical devices and optical systems. Many of these devices are already commercially available — such as highly sensitive immunosensors, new materials for smart windows and reactors for the deposition of atomically thin electronic materials. Other innovations are in the final stages of commercialisation, such as ingestible gas-sensing capsules used for diagnosing gut disorders — one of his most satisfying inventions to date.

“A highlight of my scientific career was seeing the first signals from the ingestible gas-sensing capsule that I had swallowed in response to ingredients of an ice cream that I had eaten!” he said.

Prof Kalantar-zadeh has co-authored over 425 research articles and reviews and was named among the 1% most highly cited researchers internationally by Clarivate Analytics (2018 and 2019). He sits on the editorial boards of Applied Materials Today, ACS Applied Nano Materials, ACS Sensors, Advanced Materials Technologies, Nano-Micro Letters and ACS Nano. He has been awarded the IEEE Sensor Council Achievement Award (2017), the ACS Advances in Measurement Science Lectureship Award (Asia–Pacific region, 2018) and the Walter Burfitt Prize from the Royal Society of NSW (2019).

Image caption: Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh with the ingestible human gas capsule based on 2D material sensoring technology. Image credit: RMIT.

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