Elizabeth New

Elizabeth Joy New is an Australian chemist and Professor of the School of Chemistry, University of Sydney. She won the 2018 Australian Museum 3M Eureka Prize.

Early life and education

New was born in Sydney in 1984. She represented Australia at the International Chemistry Olympiad in 2000 and 2001, winning bronze and gold medals respectively, and graduated from James Ruse Agricultural High School with a UAI of 100. She earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at the University of Sydney in 2005, where she completed her master's degree in 2006 with Professor Trevor Hambley. During her graduate studies she worked on fluorescent tags to monitor the cellular uptake and metabolism of anti-tumor complexes. New completed her doctoral studies at Durham University working with David Parker, graduating in 2010. Her work looked at the cellular behaviour of lanthanide complexes.

She was appointed a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. She worked with Christopher Chang on fluorescent sensors for copper. She was an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Fellow from 2012-2014, and held a Westpac Research Fellowship from 2016-2019. New's group developed reversible fluorescent sensors for cellular redox environments. She provided the first examples of reversible ratiometric cytoplasmic sensing and mitochondrial sensing. Her group has developed cobalt complexes for contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging. The complexes can be used to monitor oxidative stress. They have also worked on the development of fluorescent sensor arrays for biological and analytical applications.
New was made a lecturer in 2015 and a senior lecturer in 2016. In 2017 she received the ChemComm Emerging Investigator. She was appointed Associate Professor in 2018 and Professor in 2021.