Rate My Professor Dino Spagnoli

Dino Spagnoli is an Associate Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences within the Faculty of Science and Academic Coordinator for the Bachelor of Philosophy (Honours) at the University of Western Australia. He obtained his MChem with a year in industry from the University of Kent, UK (1999-2003), and PhD in Computational Chemistry from the University of Bath, UK (2003-2006), supervised by Prof Steve Parker. Additionally, he holds a Graduate Certificate of Tertiary Teaching from the University of Western Australia, awarded in 2018. His postdoctoral appointments include a Research Assistant position at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA (2007-2008), and a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow role at Curtin University, Australia (2009-2011), supervised by Prof Julian Gale and Prof Kate Wright. At UWA, he served as Lecturer and Coordinator of First Year Studies in Chemistry and Biochemistry (2012-2019), Senior Lecturer in the same role (2019-2022), and has held his current positions since 2023.

Spagnoli's research interests encompass chemistry education research and computational materials chemistry. In chemistry education, he explores student self-efficacy in laboratory settings, develops new technologies to enhance cognitive and affective learning outcomes, and investigates AI applications for instructional videos and student feedback. In computational materials chemistry, his group studies astrochemistry, discovering molecular co-crystals potentially present on Titan's surface and simulating dust formation mechanisms from oxygen-rich and carbon-rich stars. Notable publications include 'Adsorption mechanism of multiple water molecules on tricalcium silicate (001) surface: A DFT study' (International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials, 2025), 'Assessing the accuracy of DFT functionals and ab initio methods for the description of multireference verdazyl radical crystalline interactions' (Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2025), 'CO2 adsorption behaviour on β-C2S(111) and (100) surfaces: Implications for carbon sequestration in cementitious materials' (International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials, 2025), and 'Size-dependent elasticity of nanocrystalline titania' (2009). He has received the RACI Chemistry Education Division Medal (2024), Wilf Ewers Citation (2022), Senior Fellow designation (2019), Faculty of Science Excellence in Coursework Teaching (Level 1) award (2017), and Award for Exceptional Contribution to Education Futures (2016). Spagnoli reviews for journals including Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, RSC Advances, and Australian Journal of Chemistry, and has obtained funding such as an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (2019).