The mission of the centre is:

  • to innovate, accelerate and translate scientific materials discoveries to transformative technologies
  • to invent, design and optimise materials from soft and condensed matter
  • to develop comprehensive pathways towards controlling and tuning materials properties and function.

Research challenges

Frontier materials

Designing and inventing new materials from small-molecule systems to complex macromolecular structures through fundamental science.

Value-added materials

Improving existing materials performances, and functions at the crossover of physics, chemistry, and engineering.

Fabrication and prototyping

Exploring the design space of products and devices to enable generative and evaluative discovery.

Characterisation and testing

Pushing new technologies towards the frontiers of ultimate structure analysis and particle-matter interaction.

Our facilities

We bring together cutting-edge instrumentation in mass spectrometry, atomic resolution transmission electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy.

Along with world-class technical expertise, our purpose-built facilities enable an efficient research space for novel material discoveries. Our laboratory spaces will provide critical research visibility for QUT on a national and global scale while nurturing emerging collaborative research.

State-of-the-art instrumentation currently under construction includes:

  • Double-aberration-correction high resolution transmission electron microscope (JEOL NEOARM)
  • Focused ion beam microscope (FIB)
  • Time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ToF-SIMS).

Our expert research team also take advantage of expert scientists and infrastructure, including the Central Analytical Research Facility (CARF).

Our directors

Professor Kathryn Fairfull-Smith

Professor Kathryn Fairfull-Smith is an ARC Future Fellow and recipient of a 2017 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research. Her work primarily focuses on using organic synthesis to build molecules or functionalise surfaces and polymers for applications including drug delivery and imaging.

View Professor Fairfull-Smith's profile

Professor Dmitri Golberg

ARC Laureate Fellow, physicist and materials scientist Professor Dmitri Golberg is a globally renowned, highly-cited (Thomson Reuters) researcher. He is a recipient of Tsukuba Prize (2005), Thomson Reuters Research Front Award (2012), “Seto” Prize by Japan Microscopy Society (2016), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS, Japan) President Award (2017), and QUT Science and Engineering Faculty Frontier of Knowledge Award (2019). His works primarily focus on synthesis and analytical in situ high-resolution transmission electron microscopy of nanomaterials for diverse structural and “green” energy applications.

View Professor Golberg's profile

This research supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The LABS

Meet some of the people changing our world for the better, with a behind the scenes snapshot of science that can:

  • transform diamonds into high powered, energy efficient electronics
  • change plastics into truly biodegradable food for organisms
  • teach robots how to navigate the world like humans do.
Download The LABS (PDF file, 17.9 MB)

Our scholarships

We're offering PhD and Masters top-up scholarships in QUT’s Annual scholarship round.

Researching with us will provide you with the opportunity to:

  • work with a team of leading researchers
  • undertake your own innovative research in and across the fields of materials sciences
  • gain an internationally-recognised postgraduate qualification.

Find out more

More information

Bio inspired nanostructures for advanced batteries

Research news

20 November

Gender inequality baked into treatment of women, dementia and aged care

Dementia disproportionately affects women whether living with dementia or supporting someone living with dementia in aged care, a fact largely ignored in the final report of the Aged Care Royal Commission, an analysis by QUT health law researchers has found.

19 November

Dr Katrina Wruck named 2025 Young Australian of the Year for Queensland

Dr Katrina Wruck, QUT research fellow in industrial chemistry and lecturer in the School of Chemistry and Physics with a passion for making the world a greener place has been named the 2025 Young Australian of the Year for Queensland. 

+ Show more

Contact us

3138 4587
Find us at
Level 2, E Block
Gardens Point