Rate My Professor Elizabeth New

Professor Elizabeth New holds the position of Professor in the School of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, at the University of Sydney, where she has been an academic since 2012. A University of Sydney alumna, she obtained her Bachelor of Science (Advanced) with First Class Honours and the University Medal, along with a Master of Science in Chemistry from the same institution. She completed her PhD at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom and undertook a two-year postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. Her career includes ARC DECRA Fellowship, Senior Lecturer and inaugural Westpac Research Fellow from 2016 to 2017, Associate Professor from 2018, and promotion to full Professor in 2021. She served as Interim Head of the School of Chemistry.

Professor New's research specializes in designing small-molecule fluorescent probes and sensors that enable imaging of biologically important species, such as metal ions including copper and iron, reactive oxygen species, and redox states, at sub-cellular levels. These tools are applied to investigate oxidative stress in ageing-associated diseases including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and Parkinson's disease, as well as anti-cancer drug mechanisms and peptide/protein dynamics in cells. Funded by ARC, NHMRC, and HFSP, her sensors provide ratiometric outputs for accurate, long-term monitoring and multimodal capabilities; some, like NpFR1 and FCR1, are commercially available from StressMarq Biosciences and used internationally.

New has earned major honors such as the Prime Minister’s Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year in 2019, the Australian Financial Review Emerging Leader in Higher Education in 2022, the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 2024 for contributions to chemical biology and molecular imaging, the Australian Museum 3M Eureka Prize for Emerging Leader in 2018, the Chemosensors Young Investigator Award in 2020, and the RACI Chemistry Educator of the Year in 2016. She is a FRACI, FRSN, FRSC, and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Additionally, she established the Sydney Early- and Mid-Career Academic Network (SEMCAN) in 2017 and the Women in Chemistry group for NSW in 2018, and contributes to editorial boards for journals like Redox Experimental Medicine and Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry.