DrMd Aquib

Aquib received his PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2026 from UNSW Sydney (Cluster for Advanced Macromolecular Design) under Professor Cyrille Boyer, with a focus on host defence peptide-inspired antimicrobial polymers to combat antimicrobial resistance. He then worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cluster for Advanced Macromolecular Design, UNSW Sydney, developing bio-derived, biodegradable antibacterial polymers, and received a UNSW Development and Research Training Grant. Aquib is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Professor Fariba Dehghani’s group in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The University of Sydney, with his research focused on polyurethane-based materials for biomedical applications. With a scientific background rooted in pharmaceutics and polymer chemistry, he has extensive experience in synthesising small-molecule building blocks, including functional monomers, RAFT chain-transfer agents and bioactive crosslinkers. He uses these to build topologically distinct polymers (linear, block, star, brush, cyclic and hyperbranched) by controlled radical polymerisation (RAFT and PET-RAFT) and ring-opening polymerisation (ROP), and studies how polymer topology governs antibacterial activity and biocompatibility. His work spans polymer chemistry, macromolecular engineering and nanomedicine, including antibacterial polymers, biodegradable and stimuli-responsive materials, and drug delivery nanoformulations. He has authored more than 25 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. His research involves a network of collaborators across polymer chemistry, microbiology and drug delivery at leading universities and research organisations in Australia and internationally.