Bertram Dillon Steele Lecture

Bertram Dillon Steele
Professor Bertram Dillon Steele

The Bertram Dillon Steele Lecture commemorates UQ’s founding Professor of Chemistry, Bertram Dillon Steele, one of the original four professors appointed to the University.

Professor Steele was also the first president of the University’s Professorial Board (now known as the Academic Board) and chaired the Royal Commission on Prickly Pear, once an environmental scourge in Queensland.  

The lecture was founded in 1982 by the UQ Chemical Society within the then Department of Chemistry.

The lecture was not offered in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2022 it is offered every second year, alternating with the School's other chemistry public lecture, the T. G. H. Jones Memorial Lecture.

Read more about Professor Steele on our history page.

Contacts

SCMB Research Administration
+61 7 3443 5900

The Secret Chemistry and Biology of the Sulfur Cycle

29 October 2024 2:00pm3:00pm
Prof Spencer Williams (University of Melbourne) will be presenting the 2024 Bertram Dillon Steele lecture. In his 'The Secret Chemistry and Biology of the Sulfur Cycle' lecture he will describe the discovery of specialised glycosidases termed sulfoquinovosidases that release SQ from sulfolipids, a new pathway for SQ degradation that achieves the cleavage of the distinctive carbon-sulfur bond, and the development of synthetic tools that can be used to study and exploit the new enzymes and proteins that we have discovered.

Nature on resin – understanding non-ribosomal peptide biosynthesis

29 November 2022 2:00pm3:00pm
Associate Professor Cryle from the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University will report the recent discoveries of his group that provide fundamental insights into non-ribosomal peptide synthesis (NRPS). This includes understanding the mechanism and selectivity of key peptide synthesis and amino acid selection domains, which are common to all NRPS assembly lines and central to their function. He will also detail our efforts to reconstitute enzymatic crosslinking during glycopeptide antibiotic maturation, which is a highly challenging chemical transformation that limits our ability to produce new members of this important class of clinical antibiotics through chemical synthesis. Throughout this presentation, he will further discuss the importance of integrating chemical synthesis into engineering strategies for these complex biosynthetic pathways.

Discovery and development of antiviral nucleosides: The story of Remdesivir (GS-5734), a broad spectrum antiviral agent for the treatment of Ebola

30 September 2019 1:00pm3:00pm
Presenter: Dr Richard Mackman, Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry, Gilead Sciences

Sensing Our World: From glucose sensors to counting single molecules and cells

18 September 2017 1:00pm2:00pm
Presenter: Professor Justin Gooding, University of New South Wales

Walking in the Woods with Quantum Chemistry - New Concepts in the World of Natural Products Biosynthesis

5 December 2016 4:00pm
Presenter: Professor Dean Tantillo, The University of California (Davis), USA

Brazilian Biodiversity, a Sophisticated Lab of Biologically Active Compounds: Tracing New Models for Medicinal Chemistry

20 July 2014 5:45pm
Presenter: Professor Vanderlan Bolzani, Universidade Estaduai Paulista (UNESP), Brazil

A Materials Genome Approach to Complex Biological-Like Systems

20 July 2013 5:45pm
Presenter: Professor Virgil Percec, P. Roy Vagelos Professor of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania

Organic Electronic Materials: a Licence to Print Money

20 July 2012 5:45pm
Presenter: Professor Andrew B Holmes AM FRS FAA, CSIRO Division of Materials Science and Engineering; University of Melbourne School of Chemistry, Bio21 Institute ; Imperial College Department of Chemistry

Preventing and Curing Infectious Diseases: Carbohydrate Vaccines and Continuous Flow Synthesis

20 July 2011 5:45pm
Presenter: Professor Peter H. Seeberger, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces

Fragments-Based Approaches for Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology

20 July 2010 6:00pm
Presenter: Prof Chris Abell, Professor of Biological Chemistry, the University of Cambridge

Discovering Enzyme Mechanism and Function

20 July 2009 6:00pm
Presenter: Prof Dale Poulter, John A. Widstoe Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, University of Utah

The Mechanism of Action of Coenzyme B12:A Computational Approach

20 July 2008 6:00pm
Presenter: Prof Leo Radom, ARC Professorial Fellow, School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney

Molecular Materials: From Clean Energy Storage to Shrinking Crystals

20 July 2007 6:00pm
Presenter: Prof Cameron Kepert, ARC Federation Fellow, School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney

Studies at the Interface of Organic and Polymer Chemistry: Facile Procedures for the Generation and Commercial Application of Polymeric Nanostructures

20 July 2006 6:00pm
Presenter: Prof Craig J Hawker, Director of the Materials Research Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara

Fish Antifreeze Proteins and Glycoproteins

20 July 2004 6:00pm
Presenter: Assoc Prof Margaret Harding, School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney

Molecular Architecture - Natural Product Interactions with Protein Domains: The New Wave of Natural Product Research

20 July 2002 6:00pm
Presenter: Prof Ronald J Quinn, Director of Natural Product Discovery, Griffith University