Alice Motion | |
---|---|
Born | Alice Elizabeth Williamson 28 October 1984 |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions | University of Sydney |
Doctoral advisor | Matthew J. Gaunt |
Other academic advisors | |
Website | www |
Alice Elizabeth Motion (born Alice Williamson,[1] 28 October 1984) is a British chemist, science communicator, and associate professor at the School of Chemistry, University of Sydney.[2] She is the founder of the Breaking Good project which encourages high school and undergraduate students to take part in research that can benefit human health.[3] In 2018, the Breaking Good project was a finalist on the Google.org Impact Challenge.[4]
Motion received her MChem from the University of Leeds in 2007 where she worked with Philip Kocienski on the synthesis of an N-acetylcolchinol-combretastatin hybrid. She moved to the University of Cambridge where she obtained her PhD in 2012 while working with Matthew J. Gaunt on strategies for asymmetric arylation.[5]
In 2012, Motion moved to the University of Sydney in Australia to work with Matthew H. Todd on the Open Source Malaria project as Postdoctoral Research Fellow.[6] In 2014, she became a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the same institution until her promotion to Lecturer in Chemical Education and Outreach at the same institution in 2017.
Pyrimethamine is a pharmaceutical medicine used in combination with leucovorin to treat toxoplasmosis and cystoisosporiasis and in combination with dapsone to prevent Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia in HIV/AIDS patients.[7][8] In 2015, Turing Pharmaceuticals drastically increased the price of pyrimethamine, which it markets as Daraprim, from about US$13.50 to $750 per tablet.[9][10] In response, Motion, along with her academic advisor, Matthew H. Todd, and the Open Source Malaria team led a small team of high school students from Sydney Grammar School to synthesise the drug.[11][12] The team produced 3.7 grams of pyrimethamine for under US$20, which would be worth between $US35,000 and $US110,000 in the United States according to Turing Pharmaceuticals's pricing.[13] This received significant media attention and was featured in The Guardian[12] and Time magazine,[14] and on ABC News (Australia),[13] the BBC,[15] and CNN.[16]
Motion, like her former research advisor, is a proponent of open science.[17][18][19][20][21] She believes that open science and research provides transparency of data and results that prevent unnecessary duplication.[22]
In December 2022 Motion was appointed interim director of Sydney Nano.[23]