Physical and Chemical Sciences research

• Sally Gaw - Aspects of environmental chemistry, including fate of contaminants in the environment and human exposure to contaminants.
• Brett Robinson - Biowaste research, trace elements in the environment, soil chemistry, environmental remediation, Rhizosphere research, Soil-plant interactions.
• Ian Shaw - Toxicology and environmental chemistry, including mechanisms of toxicity, particularly the impact of environmental contaminants on humans.

• Michael Albrow - stellar and galactic astrophysics.
• Karen Pollard - understanding the structure and evolution of stars and planetary systems, studying the pulsations of stars, variable and multiple star systems, discovering new planets and studying planetary systems.
  
• Michele Bannister-planetary astronomer. Understanding how planets formed, evolved and reached their present orbits.
  
• C. Clare Worley-Galactic Archaeology. Studies the formation and evolution history of the Milky Way.
  

Group Pages

Planetary Group

• Antony Fairbanks - Organic synthesis, carbohydrate chemistry,
• Timothy Allison - Native mass spectrometry, membrane proteins, enzymes, structural biology
• Jodie Johnston -Understanding proteins from microbial pathogens, especially those involved in essential metabolic pathways or otherwise important for pathogenicity, bacterial survival and anti-microbial resistance.
• Rudi Marquez-Mazlin- Design and development of new compounds for human, animal and plant health.
  
• Steven Marsh- Improvements to radiation therapy, simulation of MRI, nuclear medicine and radiation dosimetry.
• Daniel Foley- Developing new synthetic methods and strategies for application in early-stage drug discovery efforts.
  
• Bryn Currie- Radiation Therapy.

• Simon Brown -Properties of nanometre scale particles (called 'atomic clusters') and in developing ways of building nano-electronic devices from these clusters.
• Roger Reeves - Semiconductor thin film growth and characterisation particularly transparent conducting oxides that have applications in new electronics.
• Mike Reid - electronic structure and transition intensities of visible and UV transitions within 4fN configurations and between the 4fN and 4fN-1 5d configurations of lanthanide (rare-earth) ions in various compounds.
• Jon Paul Wells -ring lasers, interferometry and applications, optoelectronic materials, and free electron laser spectroscopy.
• Daniel Sando - functional oxides including ferroelectrics, multiferroics, and (anti-)ferromagnets. These materials show great promise in next-generation low energy devices for computing and spintronics
  
• Laura Cobus - Waves in Complex Media. Using classical waves (e.g. sound and light) to study materials that can not be cut open. These materials range from the human body to food products and industrial materials

The field of Physics encompasses the study of matter and energy, ranging from subatomic particles to the vast scale of the universe.

Cosmology investigates the large-scale properties of the universe, including its origin, evolution, and eventual fate.

Researchers at UC explore topics such as the expansion of the universe, dark matter, dark energy, and the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Astroparticle physics lies at the intersection of astronomy and particle physics.It involves using the universe as a laboratory to study high-energy phenomena.UC’s Professor Jenni Adams leads research in this area. Her group is part of the IceCube collaboration, which operates the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole.

• Professor David Wiltshire - General relativity and gravitation; Cosmology; Black holes and Quantum gravity
• Professor Jenni Adams - Cosmology and astroparticle physics; High energy neutrino detection; Inflationary phase transition and related phenomena and Large scale structure formation in the Universe 
• Dr Chris Gordon - Galactic Center; cosmic rays; dark matter; galaxy clusters; primordial power spectrum; cosmic microwave background; inflation and non-gaussianity.

Research Group Pages

Gravity and Cosmology Group

Astroparticle Physics Group

• Adrian McDonald -  processes relevant to the climate system, making fundamental atmospheric measurements and the evaluation of environmental models
  
• Laura Revell - chemistry-climate interactions, particularly involving stratospheric ozone, aerosols and airborne microplastics and working with Earth system models and global chemistry-climate models.
  
• David Frame -Policy-relevant climate modelling, cumulative emissions, weather and climate extremes, environmental public goods, global public goods.

Group Pages

Atmospheric Physics Group

• Owen Curnow - Ionic liquids based on amino-stabilised cyclopropenium cations: synthesis, properties and applications.
• Vladimir Golovko - Inorganic and materials chemistry for applications in catalysis and nanotechnology, including bio-nanotechnology.
• Konstantin Pavlov- a) developing novel deterministic X-ray phase contrast 2D, 3D and 4D imaging methods to study materials at micro- and nano-scale; b) high-resolution statistical diffraction as a characterisation method for materials of opto- and microelectronics

• Deborah Crittenden - Theoretical and computational chemistry.
• Sarah Masters -Gas-phase molecular structure.
• Greg Russell- Modelling of all aspects of free-radical polymerization kinetics; synthesis of novel emulsion polymers.

• Antony Fairbanks- Synthetic organic chemistry, carbohydrate chemistry, and applications of carbohydrates in biology and medicine (glycobiology). Research techniques primarily involve organic synthesis, together with biocatalysis and other aspects of chemical biology.
• Christopher Fitchett– synthesis of new and interesting organic molecules, particularly focusing on colossal aromatic molecules.
• Richard Hartshorn - Aspects of bio-inorganic chemistry, including the reactivity of chelated ligands, ligand construction on metal ions and the synthesis of metal ion-based hypoxic cell selective anti-cancer agents.
• Paul Kruger - Inorganic supramolecular chemistry. Interests are centred in supramolecular chemistry and involve the design, synthesis and characterization of metal complexes incorporating organic and coordination chemistries.
• Daniel Foley-Developing new synthetic methods and strategies for application in early-stage drug discovery efforts.

The School has links with the following projects and research groups:

MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology

IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory

CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research

Australian Synchrotron

Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies

Gravity and Cosmology Research Group

Astroparticle Physics Group

Atmospheric Physics Group

Planetary Group