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Professor and Director, NCI Australia, Australian National University

Sean Smith commenced as Director of NCI Australia at ANU in January 2018 and is conjointly Professor of computational nanomaterials science and technology in the Department of Applied Mathematics, Research School of Physics. He has extensive theoretical and computational research experience in chemistry, nanomaterials and nano-bio science and technology. He returned to Australia in 2014 at UNSW Sydney, founding and directing the Integrated Materials Design Centre to drive an integrated program of materials design, discovery and characterization. Prior to this, he directed the US Department of Energy funded Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of five major DOE nanoscience research and user facilities in the US, through its 2011-2013 triennial phase. During his earlier career, he joined The University of Queensland as junior faculty in 1993 after post-doctoral research at UC Berkeley (1991-1993) and Universität Göttingen (Humboldt Fellow 1989-1991); became Professor and Director of the Centre for Computational Molecular Science 2002-2011; and built up the computational nanobio science and technology laboratory the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) at UQ 2006-2011. He worked with colleagues in the ARC Center of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials 2002-2011 as Program Leader (Computational Nanoscience) and Deputy Director (Internationalisation).

Experience

  • –present
    Professor of Computational Nanomaterials Science and Technology, Australian National University

Education

  • 1989 
    University of Canterbury, Phd / Theoretical Chemistry

Professional Memberships

  • Fellow, Royal Australian Chemical Institute
  • Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Fellow, Institution of Chemical Engineers