Colleagues, collaborators and former students gathered at UNSW to celebrate Scientia Professor Justin Gooding’s 60th birthday and his career translating research into real-world technologies.
UNSW Scientia Professor Justin Gooding didn't set out to become an academic researcher.
As an honours student at the University of Melbourne, he gravitated towards surface chemistry simply because it was the one subject he really wanted to read about. He went on to work in industrial research in Melbourne, complete a PhD at Oxford and undertake postdoctoral research at Cambridge, with every intention of returning to industry.
But when he returned to Australia, his plans changed.
“I wanted to do something where I felt I could make things better for the world,” Prof. Gooding says. “I realised the privilege of being an academic researcher is that you can do exactly that.
“There aren't many jobs where, if you do something great, you'll actually make people's lives better in a profound sense.”
That ambition has shaped a career in which scientific discoveries about how biological molecules interact with solid surfaces have repeatedly been translated into technologies with real-world impact.
Prof. Gooding’s research has contributed to the development of AgaMatrix blood glucose monitoring systems and Inventia Life Science’s RASTRUM 3D bioprinting platform that allows researchers to create reproducible models of different cancers and their surrounding cells.
He is currently working with Nutromics to develop a wearable patch designed to continuously monitor levels of medicines and other biomarkers beneath the skin, potentially offering a new era of precision dosing.
Behind these very different technologies is a consistent approach: start with the problem, then work out how the science can help solve it.
Taking research beyond the lab
Colleagues, collaborators and former students gathered at UNSW Sydney to celebrate Prof. Gooding’s career and 60th birthday last weekend at an event, Homage to Justin Gooding.
Researchers and biotechnology leaders from Australia and around the world spoke about their connections with Prof. Gooding, including representatives from Nutromics, Inventia Life Science, Nanosoils, SDIP Innovations, Deliver Biosciences and Veriteos.
“Working with an industry partner, I tend to ask people what the problem is and try to solve it,” Prof. Gooding says. “It sounds incredibly simple, but it’s about understanding the problem and seeing whether my skills can help address it.”
One of the earliest examples was the translation of Prof. Gooding’s surface chemistry research into glucose sensing. Working with a start-up, he helped develop and commercialise a portable glucose meter, the world’s first blood glucose meter to connect directly with an iPhone, which became one of the first medical devices sold through Apple retails stores.
This glucose meter has changed the daily life for millions of people living with diabetes, transforming an invasive, cumbersome process into a simple, portable routine.
That same problem-first approach would later underpin another of Prof. Gooding’s major translational successes, the 3D bioprinter.
In 2011, Dr Julio Ribeiro, founder and CEO of Inventia Life Science, approached Prof. Gooding with an idea for a bioprinting technology that could make producing realistic human 3D tissue models easier.
“What struck me immediately was not simply his enthusiasm, but his ability to see its potential. He didn’t dwell on why it might not work; he wanted to understand what I had in mind and how could we make it possible,” Dr Ribeiro says.
“Often, with only a few sentences, he would grasp the essence of an idea, add to it and improve it.”
The 3D bioprinter has introduced a new level of precision, enabling pharmaceutical companies to test drug candidates more efficiently and ethically. More than 120 printers have since been distributed worldwide.
“What I have always admired most about Justin is his intelligence. Not simply academic intelligence, which is obvious to everyone who knows his work, but a much broader, almost worldly intelligence. He has an extraordinary ability to understand people, situations and problems from many different perspectives.”
Friendship and discovery
Collaboration has been central to Prof. Gooding’s research career, but for him, choosing collaborators is about more than finding people with the right scientific expertise.
“The people you like being with are the ones you choose to collaborate with,” he says. “Obviously, they have to have the skills and knowledge that our team doesn’t have, but they also need to be nice people and people you enjoy being with.”
For Prof. Gooding, the friendships that develop through research reflect how personally scientists invest in their work.
“People often say when they don’t get a grant or their paper gets rejected that it’s not personal, but research is personal,” he says.
“We put our hearts into it. It means everything to us to make a contribution, so you might as well do that with people you really enjoy being with.”
One of Prof. Gooding’s closest scientific collaborators was also his late wife, UNSW Scientia Professor Katharina (Kat) Gaus, an internationally recognised immunologist and molecular microscopist who passed away in 2021. The pair brought together their complementary expertise in chemistry, biosensing, immunology and microscopy in their research at UNSW.
“When you talk about collaboration and friendship, collaborating with your life partner is pretty nice,” Prof. Gooding says.
Prof. Gaus’ legacy at UNSW is recognised through the Katharina Gaus Light Microscopy Facility, which supports researchers using advanced microscopy techniques.
Friendships forged through science were reflected in speeches made during the event over the weekend. UNSW Professor Maria Kavallaris was one of several academics who spoke on the unexpected side effects of research and friendship.
The pair collaborated at UNSW and the Children’s Cancer Institute, with their most notable breakthrough being the 3D bioprinter for cancer research.
Prof. Kavallaris described the ‘Gooding phenomenon’ as what happens when Prof. Gooding’s curiosity meets a scientific problem, often turning a conversation into a new way of thinking, an ambitious project or an unexpected collaboration.
Their scientific collaboration developed alongside a longstanding friendship, with ideas often emerging from informal conversations over coffee, conference dinners and barbecues.
“Looking back, it is remarkable how often seemingly random conversations evolved into impactful research,” Prof. Kavallaris says.
“What I value most is that the friendship and the science have always reinforced each other. There is a level of trust that allows you to challenge ideas openly, take risks, and pursue unconventional approaches.”
She says that some of their most successful projects arose because they trusted each other enough to venture into unfamiliar territory.
“For me, Justin's career demonstrates that the most enduring scientific impact often comes from the human connections behind the science. His collaborations have advanced research, but they have also built communities, lifelong friendships and opportunities for others. That may be his most important legacy.”
The two-way nature of mentorship
But for Prof. Gooding, making a difference through science is not only about the technologies that emerge from the laboratory. It is also about developing the people who will make the discoveries of the future.
“When you become a supervisor, you go on this journey with a person who’s full of hopes and dreams,” he says. “Your job is to help them keep their hopes and dreams alive, fulfil those dreams and make a contribution to the world.”
“My role is really to help them think more externally and focus on the big picture. The big picture is making a difference, solving a problem or making lives better, rather than getting a PhD or conventional measures of success.”
Prof. Gooding and UNSW Professor Kris Kilian have a successful, long-term academic relationship that transitioned from a mentor-student partnership into a peer-to-peer research collaboration, primarily at the Australian Centre for NanoMedicine.
Prof. Kilian says the things you learn in working in a laboratory with Prof. Gooding go well beyond new knowledge in science.
“He wants to help his students be better people and learn to more effectively engage with society. This leads to relationships that go beyond typical teacher-student, fostering an environment akin to a science family. Considering the diversity of people that train with Justin, the bidirectional interactions in his group can be very rich for everyone. It’s really a fabulous ecosystem he encourages,” Prof. Kilian says.
Prof. Gooding’s commitment to mentoring extends beyond the laboratory. He created and taught Science and Cinema, one of UNSW’s most popular general education courses, using films to explore the role of science in society.
Asked what he has learnt from the people he has supervised, Prof. Gooding points to qualities including humility, patience, resilience and adaptability.
“Good people want to do good things for the world, and you’ve just got to help them,” he says.
The big picture
Prof. Gooding remains excited by what science might make possible next.
His current work with Nutromics is exploring technology that could continuously monitor molecules inside the body through a wearable patch, allowing clinicians to track levels of certain medicines in real time.
Rather than relying on intermittent blood tests, the technology aims to provide real-time information about drug levels in the body, potentially allowing doses to be tailored more precisely to individual patients.
“For me, I never thought it was going to be possible to put devices into the body, essentially through the skin, and monitor molecules in real time,” he says.
“Now we can monitor down to single molecules and even do single-molecule counting,” he says.
“We can make quantitative devices based on single molecules, which means you have the ultimate sensitivity. I never even thought of that when I was a young scientist. To think that we can now look at individual molecules is astonishing to me.”
Looking back, Prof. Gooding says the advice he would give his younger self is much the same as the advice he gives researchers today.
“Focus on the big picture and think about what your values are and what you believe in. When I first became an academic, I decided I was going to be a good person, be a good mentor and hopefully do some good science along the way.”
Ends
Contact details:
Yolande Hutchinson
Mob: 0420 845 023
