In our final post for 2025, we list a few things have happened in the group over the past weeks:
- Former PhD student Dr Dale Lonsdale returned as a postdoc to work on an exciting new project.
- Congratulations to Dr Amy Hancock for passing her PhD
- Congratulations Moss Cowcher and Vaughan Riley for passing their MSc
- The group went to MM2025 in Melbourne, where Ariel gave a talk, and Ben, Chloe and Shebual presented posters
- The Australian’s Research Magazine lists A/Prof. Lars Goerigk among Australia’s top 250 scientists in 2026 and as a leading researcher in the field “Spectroscopy & Molecular Physics”. Once a year the research magazine ranks researchers and institutions based on impact and quality of their output, and identifies field-specific leaders across eight different disciplines. This year’s full list can be found here: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/special-reports/research-magazine/the-2026-research-magazine-showcases-the-benefits-of-research/news-story/cd04714e9c76e43bbcd32ad0288e7470
- The group had an end of year celebration (see our latest group picture) and farewelled Amy, Moss and Vaughan. You’ll be missed!
Congratulations to Ariel Jones for winning a prize for giving the best long talk at the School of Chemistry’s graduate researcher conference 2025, for her talk “Surprising challenges for modelling excited-state non-covalent interactions”
We are very pleased to have made a small contribution to an Edge Article in Chemical Science led by Dr Chris Ritchie from Monash University: P. W. McDonald, L. Goerigk, C. Ritchie, “Planarisation or a twist? Using steric engineering to unlock the origin of mechanofluorochromic red-shifts“, Chemical Science 2025, published online. DOI: 10.1039/D5SC04257G (open access)
Our newest paper “Rare-gas excimers and exciplexes: Surprising challenges for time-dependent Density Functional Theory approaches” just got published in Polyhedron as part of a special issue to celebrate the centenary of John Pople’s birth:
An industry-funded postdoc position (12 months at 0.9 FTE) is available in our group. The position does not come with visa sponsorship and applicants need to have valid work rights in Australia. For more information, see:
https://unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/UoM_External_Career/job/Parkville/Research-Fellow-in-Theoretical-Quantum-Chemistry_JR-002141
Our latest paper, published as a joint computational-experimental study with the Ritchie group at Monash University, solves a long-standing problem in computational chemistry: the accurate prediction of electronic excitations in BODIPY dyes. “Spin-scaled double hybrids with long-range correction solve the TD-DFT overestimation problem in BODIPY dyes: benchmarking and experimental validation”, RSC Advances 2025, 15, 22419-22431. DOI: 10.1039/D5RA01408Ed5ra01408e (open access)
Congratulations to Ariel Jones who won one of the prizes for the best talk at the Australian Winter School in Computational Chemistry in Kiama, NSW.
It’s been a while since a group update has been given, so here are the highlights:
- Ben and Chloe joined the group as Masters students in March and have already made great progress. Chloe will also conduct experiments, as she is co-supervised by Prof. Evan Bieske
- Congratulations, Amy, for submitting your PhD thesis
- Congratulations, Erica, for submitting your Masters thesis. Erica will be leaving the group next week. You’ll be missed, Erica. All the best for your future career.
- Quyen’s 12 months stay here is coming to an end. She will return to Belgium soon to complete her joint-PhD degree with KU Leuven there.
- Lars Goerigk has joined the Editorial Advisory Board of The Journal of Computational Chemistry.
Congratulations, Haseena, on the first paper of her PhD, which just got published in Inorganic Chemistry and is a joint computational-experimental study led by Prof. Colette Boskovic and in collaboration with Dr Marcus Giansiracusa. The paper is called “Cobalt Complexes with Aminophenolate Ligands: Spin Crossover and Ligand Versatility” and can be accessed here.
Congratulations to Quyen for winning one of the poster prizes at this year’s Melbourne Meeting of Molecular Modellers.