Prof Andrew Holmes

Duration: 19 min 38 sec
Format: MP3

Our guest for this episode is Professor Andrew Holmes. Andrew is an ARC Federation Fellow and the inaugural VESKI Fellow at the Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne.

Andrew Holmes was an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne and completed a PhD degree with Professor Franz Sondheimer at University College London. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow on the final stages of the synthesis of vitamin B12 with Professor A. Eschenmoser. He was at Cambridge for thirty-two years, then moved to Imperial College from where he is on long term leave of absence seconded as an ARC Federation Fellow and Inaugural VESKI Fellow at the Bio21 Institute in the University of Melbourne and CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies, Clayton.

Professor Holmes's research interests span a range of natural and non-natural synthetic targets. His polymer research spans a range of functional and electroactive polymers. A recent interest has been the use of phosphoinositides to probe downstream signalling processes in protein kinases that has revealed many new proteins involved in intracellular signalling pathways. The work of his group on polymeric light emitting diodes has excited considerable attention and spawned a totally new research area. Further potential applications of conjugated polymers in the fields of field effect transistors and solar cells are also possible.

Professor Holmes is a co-recipient of the Descartes Prize 2003. In May, 2000 he was elected FRS. He was appointed AM in the Australia Day Honours List in 2004 and he was elected FAA in March 2006 and FTSE in November 2006. He was Chairman of the Editorial Board of Chemical Communications from 2000-2003 and he has been an Associate Editor of Organic Letters since April 2006.

Errata: The original audio contained an error. That error has been corrected, and the audio files have been replaced as of June 28, 2007.

"What about shining light on the plastic? And getting electricity back out from it? And indeed it is possible." - Prof Andrew Holmes

Poison Arrow Frog (Dendrobates)	The Holmes Group

Useful Information

Recent Publications

• Poly(2,7-dibenzosilole): A Blue Light Emitting Polymer, K.-L. Chan, M. J. McKiernan, C. R. Towns and A. B. Holmes, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2005, 127, 7662-7663.
• Blue-to-green Electrophosphorescence of Iridium-based Cyclometallated Materials. C. S.- K. Mak, A. Hayer, S. I. Pascu, S. E. Watkins, A. B Holmes, A. Kohler and R. H Friend, Chem. Commun., 2005, 4708-4710.
• Poly(9,9-dialkyl-3,6-dibenzosilole) - a High Energy Gap Host for Phosphorescent Light Emitting Devices, K. L. Chan, S. E. Watkins, C. S. K. Mak, M. McKiernan, C. R. Towns, S. I. Pascu and A. B. Holmes, Chem. Commun., 2005, 5766-5768.
• A Synthesis of (+)-Obtusenyne, S. Y. F. Mak, N. R. Curtis, A. N. Payne, M. S. Congreve, C. L. Francis, J. W. Burton and A. B. Holmes, Synthesis, 2005, 3199-3201.
• Interface Engineering for Solid-state Dye-sensitised Nanocrystalline Solar Cells: the Use of an Organic Redox Cascade, N. Hirata, J. E. Kroeze, T. Park, D. Jones, S. A. Haque, A. B. Holmes and J. R. Durrant, Chem. Commun., 2006, 535-537 (correction Chem. Commun., 2006, 677).
• Triplet Energy Back Transfer in Conjugated Polymers with Pendant Phosphorescent Iridium Complexes, N. R. Evans, L. Sudha Devi, C. S. K. Mak, S. E. Watkins, S. I. Pascu, A. K?hler, R. H. Friend, C. K. Williams and A. B. Holmes, J. Am. Chem. Soc.,2006, 128, 6647-6656.
• Synthesis and Properties of Poly(arylene vinylene)s, A. C. Grimsdale and A. B. Holmes in Conjugated Polymers: Theory, Synthesis, Properties, and Characterization, Handbook of Conducting Polymers, T. A. Skotheim and J. R. Reynolds, Eds., 3rd Ed., CRC Press, Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton FL 2007, pp 4-1-4.22.

Bio21 Insitute

The Holmes Group

Prof Andrew Holmes' web page

Royal Society of Chemistry

Journal of the American Chemistry Society

Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry

Please note: The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics in Cambridge

Credits

Host: Dr Shane Huntington
Producers: Kelvin Param, Eric van Bemmel and Dr Shane Huntington
Audio Engineer: Dean Collett
Theme Music performed by Sergio Ercole. Mr Ercole is represented by the Musicians' Agency, Faculty of Music
Voiceover: Paul Richiardi

Series Creators: Eric van Bemmel and Kelvin Param

Prof Holmes' portrait by Michael Silver

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