Position: Director Electron Microscope Unit and Professor in the School of Chemistry, University of New South Wales, Australia.
Field: Nanotechnology.
When we first interviewed Dr Richard Tilley he was a senior lecturer in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. He also headed a Nanomaterials Research Group, and was a Principal Investigator for the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. A large part of Richard’s job was running the electron microscope facility of the MacDiarmid Institute.
Like many nanotechnologists, Richard did not start out in that field. He first trained and worked as a chemist. He now works with nanoparticles and their applications, so he is a nanotechnologist, but still sees himself as a chemist as well.
Chemistry and nanotechnology are very complex subjects, but Richard thinks that his enjoyment of them has some very simple origins. He likes making things, and he is a very ‘visual’ person. As a nanotechnologist, Richard is continually making things, normally at a very small scale. “Really being the first person to make something, to me, is still a tremendous achievement and feeling, and that is really a strong driver for me.”
With the electron microscope, essentially, what you are doing is seeing atoms, and you’re seeing how atoms are joining together, and that still gives me a tremendous rush and a buzz, each time I am really looking at atoms.
As a ‘visual’ person, Richard still gets enjoyment out of seeing the colours of different nanoparticles in solution and of seeing his quantum dots emitting coloured light. His work with microscopes gives him new ways of seeing things.
Update
In 2015 Richard was appointed Director of the Electron Microscope Unit and Professor in the School of Chemistry, University of New South Wales, Australia. see his profile here for information on his latest research and projects.
This article is based on information current in 2008 and updated in 2018.
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Explore the work Richard and his team undertook making new nanoparticle shapes to increase the efficiency of catalysts and reduce poisonous emissions from car exhausts and investigating the use of quantum dots to find and eventually target drug delivery to cancerous cells.
