2020 Laureate Profile: Professor Martina Stenzel
Professor Martina Stenzel
Administering Organisation: The University of New South Wales
Fellowship project summary:
FL200100124: The administration of therapeutic drugs is often unsuccessful as the drug is quickly cleared from the body. Nanoparticles have been shown to enhance the efficiency of the drug administration, as evidenced by the increasing number of nanoformulations on the market, although commercially available products have currently a range of shortcomings, some of them related to their size. This research program aims to develop a toolset that allows the design of very small nanoparticles that display enhanced biological activity. The outcome will be an in-depth understanding of the relationship between polymer structure and properties, which is not only important for nanomedicine, but other areas such as catalysis and sensors.
Australian Research Council funding: $3,372,617.00
About Professor Martina Stenzel
Martina Stenzel studied chemistry at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, before completing her PhD in 1999 at the Institute of Applied Macromolecular Chemistry, University of Stuttgart, Germany. Following a DAAD scholarship (German Academic Exchange Service), she started working as a postdoctoral Fellow at the UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology at The University of New South Wales (UNSW). In 2002, she took on a position as a lecturer in Chemical Engineering at UNSW and worked in the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design (CAMD). She was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2009 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2012.
In 2013, Professor Stenzel was appointed Co-Director of the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design (CAMD). In 2014 she joined the School of Chemistry at UNSW to establish a research program on polymeric nano- and biomaterials. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2018.
Find out more about Professor Stenzel’s research by visiting her profile page on The University of New South Wales website.
For further information about this funding scheme, please visit the Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme page.
Image credit: The University of New South Wales