Dr Albert Fahrenbach, who was recently promoted to Senior Lecturer in a continuing position at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney Australia, has now been appointed as the Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology.
Albert is also the founding academic of a new undergraduate course at UNSW, the Chemical Origins of Life. Be on the lookout for his Oxford Chemistry Primer on Prebiotic Chemistry set to come out next year!
Albert was also awarded a 2020 Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant as the chief investigator and received a prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in 2022, both related to astrobiology research. He was awarded a UNSW Outstanding Supervisor Award in recognition of his efforts to support his students throughout the pandemic.
Albert is the current Treasurer of the UNSW Chemical Society, lead organiser of NASA Astrobiology’s Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments (PCE3) Online Seminar Series, and a member of the newly established UNSW RNA Institute. Congratulations to Albert and good luck to him in steering the ACA Ship!