MCEM Director Awarded 2022 Australian Laureate Fellowship

Professor Joanne Etheridge (MCEM Director) was awarded more than $3.2 million for her project “New ways to see” using electron microscopy. She is the second Monash researcher to be awarded the Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship to promote and mentor women in STEM, the other being Professor Kate Smith-Miles who received the prestigious award in 2014.

Her project aims to deliver new ways to see our world at the level of atoms using electron microscopy. This will help understanding of the natural world, as well as engineer it to develop materials with useful properties such as catalysts, and renewable economy materials like solar cells.

“I am thrilled to be awarded the Fellowship. I hope it will build upon the excellence in imaging physics, electron microscopy and materials science that exists at Monash,” said Professor Etheridge, who will move to the Faculty of Science with the Fellowship.

Fellowship Project Summary

FL220100202 – “New ways to see” - Reimagining Electron Microscopy

Electron microscopes can see features as small as an atom. They are used across Australia in universities, industry and hospitals to image small things, from the coronavirus to a computer chip to a solar cell, so we can understand how they work. This project aims to develop a new electron microscope capability that can achieve an entirely new level of sensitivity and thereby detect features that currently cannot be seen. This will provide scientists, engineers and industry with a new tool for investigating the natural world and for engineering new functional materials and devices. The new electron microscopy methods developed in the project will enable the precise design of materials and devices in areas as diverse as computing, energy storage and production, communications, drug delivery and lighting and will underpin advanced manufacturing industries. Through ongoing collaboration with industry, this project will also deliver a new analytical capability and intellectual property that could be commercialised and deployed worldwide.