Researcher biography

Biography

Professor Colin Raston FRACI CChem FRSC is a South Australia Premier's Professorial Research Fellow in Clean Technology. He completed a PhD under the guidance of Professor Allan White, and after postdoctoral studies with Professor Michael Lappert at the University of Sussex, he was appointed a lecturer at The University of Western Australia (1981) then to Chairs of Chemistry at Griffith University (1988), Monash University (1995), The University of Leeds (2001), and The University of Western Australia (2003). He is a former President, Queensland Branch President, and Chair of the Inorganic Division, the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. His current research covers clean technology and green chemistry, process intensification, nanotechnology and self-assembly, and is currently on the editorial advisory editorial boards of the journals Green Chemistry and RSC Advances (Royal Society of Chemistry), and on the editorial board of Crystal Growth and Design (American Chemical Society).

He has received the Royal Australian Chemical Institute’s Green Chemistry Challenge Award, the H.G. Smith Award, the Burrows Award, and the Leighton Memorial Award, and is a former recipient of an ARC Special Investigator Award, ARC Senior Research Fellowships, and played a leading role in establishing the ARC Centre of Excellence in Green Chemistry at Monash University. He is a former member of the College of Experts for the Australian Research Council (2007-2009).

He has been on editorial board of several journals including Aust. J. Chem., and as Topic Editor for Crystal Growth and Design.  He has completed a term as Chair of the Editorial Board of Green Chemistry, and member of the Editorial Board of Chem. Commun., and the International Advisory Committee for Angew. Chem. In 1996 he chaired the 17th International Conference on Organometallic Chemistry in Brisbane.

Professor Raston has published over 625 journal articles, and has a book, chapters in books, and has patents on fullerene, nano-particles, calixarenes, carbon nanotube separation, microfluidics and surface technology.