Associate Professor Idriss Blakey

Associate Professor Blakey's research interests focus on using advance material characterisation techniques to understand the relationships between the structure of designer polymers and their performance in applications such as nanomedicine, sensors and nanofabrication.

Associate Professor Blakey is a group leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and the Centre for Advanced Imaging. During his appointment at UQ he has been a recipient of a Vice Chancellor’s Research and Teaching Fellowship, an ARC Future Fellowship, a Linkage Projects International Fellowship, and a Queensland Government Smart State Fellowship. Prior to joining UQ he worked at Polymerat, a materials biotechnology startup company now listed on the ASX as AnteoTech.

Industry

​Associate Professor Blakey engages widely with industry partners.  This current invloves directly funded research with Tokyo Electron on projects associated with materials development for semiconductor manufacture. He is also a chief investigator on an ARC Research hub for Advanced Manufacture of Targeted Radiopharmaceuticals (AMTAR), which involves numerous industry partners investigating the common industry challenges associated with targeted radiopharmaceutical development. Associate Professor Blakey has also previously been a chief investigator on numerous ARC Linkage projects with Intel, Sematech and the Dow Chemical Company as well as a chief investigator on the ARC Training Centre for Innovation in Biomedical Imaging Technology (CIBIT). Key outcomes from these endevours  have included novel materials and processes that have been described in joint publications and 6 fully granted patents, where 4 patents have been subject to licencing agreements with industry partners.

Collaborations

​My publications have involved international collaborations with academica and industry partners from countries such as USA, UK, Japan, Sweden, Belgium Finland, Germany, France and the Netherlands. Key collaborating institutions include Universtiy of Nottingham, University of California Santa Barbara and the University of Exeter.

Funding

​Associate Professor Blakey has been awarded over $AUD 15M funding, via ARC Discovery grants, ARC Linkage grants, Fellowships and direct industry funding. Currently funding includes chief investigator roles on an ARC Discovery grant on developing novel hybrid materials using sequential infiltration synthesis and an ARC Research hub for Advanced Manufacture of Targeted Radiopharmaceuticals (AMTAR).

Key Publications

​Macroscale superlubricity induced by film-forming polymer brush-grafted colloidal additives A Beheshti, Y Huang, I Blakey, JR Stokes Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 634, 703-714

Stepwise like supramolecular polymerization of plasmonic nanoparticle building blocks through complementary interactions P Dey, KJ Thurecht, PM Fredericks, I Blakey Macromolecules 53 (17), 7469-7478

Diagnostic prospects and preclinical development of optical technologies using gold nanostructure contrast agents to boost endogenous tissue contrast P Dey, I Blakey, N Stone Chemical Science 11 (33), 8671-8685

Spatial control of the topography of photo-sensitive block copolymer thin films LC Chambers, Y Huang, KS Jack, I Blakey Polymer Chemistry 10 (23), 3135-3145

Using directed self assembly of block copolymer nanostructures to modulate nanoscale surface roughness: towards a novel lithographic process YM Chuang, KS Jack, HH Cheng, AK Whittaker, I Blakey Advanced Functional Materials 23 (2), 173-183