Medals for chemistry professor

It has been a good year for professor of chemistry Alan Bond, who has been awarded three prestigious medals for his work in electrochemistry.

He was recently awarded the Faraday Medal by the Royal Society of Chemistry (London) for general excellence in electrochemistry - the science of converting chemical reactions into electricity (a commonly known application is the car battery) or vice versa (eg the production of aluminium).

He has also been honoured with the Royal Society of Victoria Medal for outstanding contributions to research in Victoria, and earlier this year was presented with the Royal Australian Chemical Institute's Burrows Medal for his work in applying electrochemistry to inorganic chemistry.

Professor Bond, who this year became head of the Chemistry department, acknowledged the contribution of his Monash colleagues to his success.

"You never get these awards on your own. It's inevitable in chemistry that you work with teams or groups of people, and I have had some very talented people working with me," he said.

He also acknowledged support from the Australian Research Council, which had provided $200,000 a year for three years under a Special Investigator Award.

He said part of this research involved studying non-traditional forms of electrochemistry.