Rate My Professor Keith Gordon

Professor Keith Gordon joined the University of Otago's Department of Chemistry in 1993 as a Lecturer (1993-1998), progressed to Senior Lecturer (1999-2002), Associate Professor (2003-2009), and Professor since 2009. He was Head of the Department from 2018 to 2022. His academic background includes a BSc with First Class Honours in Chemistry awarded in June 1986 and a PhD in Chemistry in November 1989 from The Queen's University of Belfast. The PhD thesis titled "Time-Resolved Spectroscopy of the Excited States of some Copper(I) Complexes in Solution" was supervised by Professor J.J. McGarvey. Subsequently, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast (1989-1990) under the same supervisor and then at Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA (1990-1992), where he held a Director's Postdoctoral Fellowship working with Professor W.H. Woodruff on ultrafast laser spectroscopy of biological systems and solar energy materials.

Gordon's primary research interests lie in vibrational spectroscopy, utilizing techniques such as Raman, infrared, and low-frequency Raman to analyze chemical species in complex matrices including food products (honey, milk powder, cheese, fish), pharmaceuticals, and advanced materials like conducting polymers and dye-sensitised solar cells. He is Editor-in-Chief of Vibrational Spectroscopy (Elsevier) since 2016 and holds positions on editorial advisory boards for Journal of Raman Spectroscopy and Chemical Physics Review. With over 500 peer-reviewed publications and more than 18,000 citations, his work has had substantial impact across chemical physics, food science, and energy technologies. Gordon is a founding Principal Investigator in the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology and the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies. His accolades include the University of Otago Distinguished Research Medal (2021), Royal Society Te Apārangi MacDiarmid Medal (2019), New Zealand Institute of Chemistry Maurice Wilkins Prize (2010), RSC Australasian Lecturer (2019), Division of Sciences Senior Researcher of the Year (2015), and Division of Sciences Research Group of the Year (2017). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi (FRSNZ, 2012), Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC, 2011), New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (FNZIC, 2004), and IUPAC (2020). Additionally, he served as President of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry in 2006, Chairman of the Otago Branch (2002-2003), and international advisor for the ICAVS conference series, chairing ICAVS-10 in Auckland in 2019.