Professor Thomas Maschmeyer, FAA FTSE
ARC Future Fellow and Professor of Chemistry
Contact Details
School of Chemistry, Building F11
The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia
E-mail address: thomas.maschmeyer@sydney.edu.au
Telephone: +61 (2) 9351-2581
Fax: +61 (2) 9351-3329
Home Page: www.acs.chem.usyd.edu.au
Career Highlights/History
Thomas is an inventor on 20 patents; his close to 200 refereed publications have received around 4500 citations in the scientific literature (his H-index is 36 and his m-value 2.4), including publications in the top ranking international journals (e.g Science, Nature, Angewandte Chemie).
After completing his PhD research at The University of Sydney 15 yers ago, Thomas took up the Australian Bicentennial Postdoctoral Fellowship in London. Within a year he was appointed Assistant Director of the Davy Faraday Laboratories in the Royal Institution of Great Britain and held an associated research position concurrently at the University of Cambridge. After three years he was appointed as Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Organic and Catalytic Chemistry in the Delft Institute of Chemical Technology in the Netherlands at the TU Delft (viewed at the time by the EU Research Council to be in the top four Technical Universties in Europe together with Imperial College, RWTH Aachen and ETH Zurich), where he rose to the Vice‑Chairmanship of the Institute. He was attracted back to Australia as a Federation Fellow in late 2003.
Thomas’ research can be broadly categorised, as active site engineering dealing with the design of crystalline and non-crystalline materials that assist in the transformation of one compound into another. His most significant research achievements have been in the field of applied catalysis. He has advanced and integrated the fundamental understanding of the design and engineering of catalytically active sites, new materials and new reactor concepts. Thomas is also increasingly focusing his research in the direction of “green chemistry” – the chemistry of sustainability.
Catalysis has the potential to minimise waste by-products in industrial processes, to minimise the use of solvents (and consequently organic wastes), to reduce the extremes of temperature and pressure (i.e. the energy) required for many chemical transformations and to improve yields and produce cleaner products requiring less purification. All of these benefits improve the overall environmental footprint of many industrial processes, making them more environmentally friendly and socially more acceptable.
Thomas is currently President of the Catalysis Society of Australia and member of the editorial boards of five international journals. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Inter-faculty University of Sydney Institute of Sustainable Solutions and founding director of the University of Sydney Centre for Sustainable Molecular Science and Technology. He advises both the Federal and the NSW State governments, holds a number of local and international consultancies and has been non-executive Director of several companies in the biofuels sector, including Ignite Energy Resources, IER, which is a merged entitity derived from the two companies he co-founded since is return: Ignite Energy and Licella.
Research Interests:
- Catalysis
- 3rd Generation, Sustainable Biofuels
- Solar Hydrogen from Waste Streams
- High-Energy-Density Flow Batteries
- Ionic Liquids
- Sustainable Processes (Green Chemistry)
- Micro- and Mesoporous Nano-structured Materials
Nov. 2008 – current: Professor of Chemistry, The University of Sydney, School of Chemistry, Foundation Director USyd Institute of Sustainable Solutions;
Nov. 2003 – Oct. 2008: Federation Fellow/Professor of Chemistry, The University of Sydney, School of Chemistry;
Jan. 2001 – Nov. 2003: Vice-Chairman of the Institute of Chemical Technology, TU Delft;
Aug. 1998 – Nov. 2003: Head of The Department of Applied Organic and Catalytic Chemistry, Institute of Chemical Technology, TU Delft;
Aug. 1998 – Nov. 2003: Professor of Industrial Organic Chemistry, Institute of Chemical Technology, TU Delft;
Jan. 1996 – Aug. 1998: Affiliated Lecturer/EU Fellow, Inorganic Chemistry, University of Cambridge;
Jan. 1996 – Aug. 1998: Assistant Director, Davy Faraday Laboratories, The Royal Institution, London
Oct. 1994 – Dec. 1995: Australian Bicentennial Fellow and EPSRC PDRA, Davy Faraday Laboratories, The Royal Institution, London
Awards (last three years)
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Australian Academy of Science, Le Fèvre Memorial Prize (2007)
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University Professor, University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris VI (2006)
List of general research interests
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Catalysis
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Renewable Feedstocks (Solar Hydrogen, Biomass)
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Sustainable Processes (Green Chemistry)
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Micro- and Mesoporous Nano-structured Materials
Research
Details of research can be found here.
Publications/Patents (2009 - 2012)
A list of publications for the last three years can be found here.