Continuing to invest in sustainable industrial techniques will be extremely important in improving the environment and our relationship with it. “Green chemistry” seeks to minimise or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances. One of the goals of green chemistry is for the term to completely disappear – it should simply become how we practise chemistry, and make things.

Australia’s recent decision to reschedule MDMA and psilocybin for therapeutic use represents a seismic shift in drug policy. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has approved the prescription of these substances for specific psychiatric conditions, acknowledging their potential therapeutic benefits and enabling their use in a controlled medical context.

In 2019, to celebrate International Year of the Periodic Table and the 150th anniversary of Dmitri Mendeleev’s 1869 discovery, Melbourne artists Damon Kowarsky and Hyunju Kim were commissioned to design 51 images describing the birth of the universe through to the charting of the elements on the Periodic Table. These 51 images were installed on hexagons in the gallery at Quantum Victoria.

With electric vehicles predicted to represent 90% of all cars and light commercial vehicles on Australian roads by 2050, structural supercapacitors have the potential to revolutionise our transport by providing ‘mass-less’ energy storage, storing electrical energy in lightweight structural components of a vehicle’s body instead of in heavy, sole-purpose batteries. Dr Nisa Salim and her research team are working with multinational companies and Australian SMEs to demonstrate the exciting potential of these new supercapacitors, leveraging her collaborative relationships with a global academic and industrial network to take this cutting-edge research from the lab to the market place.

According to Dr Anita Hill, CSIRO’s Chief Research Scientist, “There are several impressive factors about Professor Fox. Her ability to communicate, inspire, and advocate for science is evident not only from the ecosystem that she has been able to create and fund but also from her presentations, several of which are available on YouTube as TEDx talks or interviews. She provides audiences of any background a vision of the future and one where Australia is designing and manufacturing the lightweight materials of future mobility (flying cars, hyperloops). She is a role model for STEM and for supporting high tech companies in Australia. She is recognised internationally, and uses her networks to Australia’s advantage.”