Michelle Coote

Michelle Louise Coote FRSC FAA is an Australian polymer chemist. She has published extensively in the fields of polymer chemistry, radical chemistry and computational quantum chemistry. Michelle is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences (FAA). Coote is a Professor of Chemistry in the Australian National University (ANU) College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.^[1] She is a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science ^[2] and past chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Free-Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology.^[3]

Education and early career

Professor Michelle Coote completed a B.Sc. (Hons) in Industrial Chemistry at the University of New South Wales in 1995. During her degree she spent 15 months working in the chemical industry, "but it made me realise that my real interest was in a career in pure chemical research. So, I went back to university and ended up graduating in 1995 with the university medal."^[4] Graduating in 2000 with a PhD in Polymer Chemistry from UNSW, Coote took out major awards from both the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) and International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) for her PhD thesis 'The origin of the penultimate unit effect in free-radical copolymerisation'.^[5]

Coote left Australia for the UK in September 1999 to take up a Post Doctoral Research Role in polymer physics focusing on neutron reflectivity within the Polymer Interdisciplinary Research Centre ^[6] at The University of Durham.^[7]

Academic career in Australia

Coote returned to Australia in 2001 and joined the Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University as a postdoctoral fellow with Leo Radom. It was during this time that Coote began to build a reputation in computational chemistry and she established an independent research group at ANU in 2004.

Awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2010; within the fellowship Coote focuses on a computer-guided experimental approach to understand and control the stereochemistry of free-radical polymerisation.^[8]

Coote became the first female Professor of Chemistry at ANU in 2011.^[9]

Awards, prizes and recognition

Elected as a Fellow of Australian Academy of Sciences in 2014 for developing and applying accurate computational chemistry for modelling radical polymerization processes.^[10] Michelle gave her New Fellows Presentation in July 2014 ^[11]

Coote was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in March 2013.^[12]

Coote was recognised by ANU in 2012 as part of their International Women's day celebrations for her achievements as a role model as the first female professor of chemistry at ANU and for inspiring, mentoring and motivating female undergraduate and postgraduate students in the sciences.^[13]

See also

• List of chemists

References