University of Sydney
Bioinorganic chemistry and chemical biology
Often diseases arise because of changes to the chemical content of cells. For example, the build-up of oxidising chemicals in cells can lead to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and obesity. In order to gain a better understanding of how these diseases begin, and how we can treat them, we need to be able to measure these oxidising chemicals. Dr New’s research involves developing chemical tools to study biological systems. Her group is developing probes for fluorescence imaging, as well as for magnetic resonance imaging, focussing on the study of oxidative stress and metal ions in biology. These techniques will enable us to watch cells over time, and observe how they change as they develop disease, or when they are treated with potential therapeutic drugs.
Elizabeth spent five years as lecturer and mentor for the Australian Chemistry Olympiad and was selected to be the 2014-2015 RACI Nyholm Lecturer, speaking at ten high schools throughout NSW.
She has run chemistry experiments for year 9-10 indigenous high school students at the University of Sydney’s Summer Program. In 2013 she represented alumni of International Science Olympiads in a meeting with the Chief Scientist and attended the Theo Murphy High Flyers Think Tank on “Smarter Brain Research”.