Fellowship returns biological engineer to Monash

1 November 2006 Internationally renowned scientist Dr Cait MacPhee is due to return from overseas to work at Monash, thanks to a Victorian Endowment for Science, Knowledge and Innovation (VESKI) fellowship. Dr MacPhee will be working at Monash in the Faculty of Engineering, prior to the establishment of a new division of biological engineering. VESKI was created to identify outstanding Australian expatriates and to provide fellowships as a way of encouraging them to return home. After seven years in the UK working at Edinburgh, Cambridge and Oxford universities, Dr MacPhee will return to Victoria to continue her research into the development of new materials by mimicking the way nature's proteins self-assemble and heal. All proteins, when treated in a certain way, will spontaneously form long, thin filaments 1/10,000th the size of a human hair.

Dr Cait MacPhee is coming to Monash thanks to a Victorian Endowment for Science, Knowledge and Innovation fellowship.

The filaments are like ropes in miniature, consisting of a number of strands wrapped around each other.

Dr MacPhee's research looks at how these molecules naturally self-assemble into filaments.

In order to transfer these characteristics to the real world, Dr MacPhee's research team will add non-biological functionality to the fibres, such as the ability to react to light.

"Using each of these modifications as building blocks, we will progressively build up larger scale networks and structures, ultimately producing new and self-assembling materials that have their origins in nature, but bear little or no resemblance to natural systems," Dr MacPhee said.

VESKI executive director Ms Julia Page said the fellowship for Dr MacPhee had been selected and coordinated by the VESKI board. The fellowship is collaboratively funded to the tune of $300,000 by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust, which is matched, in turn, by VESKI funding.