Sometimes students travel a long way to come study at Macquarie – and some then go on to produce such groundbreaking and innovative work here that the reverberations of their achievements are felt all over the world. Meet Ishan, PhD candidate and pioneer.

---

“It all started about four years ago. I was working back home in India at a research institute, but I felt like I wanted to get deeper into application science. So I started searching online for research areas that interested me, and came across what is known as nano-related diamond technology. I discovered that Macquarie, all the way here in Sydney, had a research group in the field so I immediately wrote to them.

I heard back from Dr. Louise Brown, who would go on to become my supervisor, that she was looking for a PhD student, so it was perfect – I just needed to find a scholarship to get me to Australia. There were quite a few, but there was one in particular that stood out to me: back then, in early 2012, there was this initiative between India and Macquarie called ‘India at 75’ to celebrate India’s independence.

I ended up becoming one of the first recipients of the scholarship, and it’s what got me to Sydney and to Macquarie. I’m really thankful for the efforts of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor S Bruce Dowton, and the Higher Degree Research Director, Dr Ren Yi, in putting in the effort and taking the time to assure me that I’d always have a place at Macquarie to complete my PhD. My supervisor, Louise, has also been instrumental in the work I’ve managed to do during my time here.

During my thesis I worked on developing very tiny diamonds, which we call ‘ultra smalls’; it’s hard to really understand how small they are, but we could say they’re roughly the width of one-thousandth of a human hair. These already exist in the market, but my thesis demonstrates ways to make them smaller, of a higher quality and with a longer lifespan than any other currently available.

Now that I’ve finished, we’re looking at all the options to commercialise what I’ve developed, and there’s already universities both in Australia and overseas using the products. We completed the website and set the company up, called LuciGem, to explore all of the applications of the diamonds in lots of different industries. It’s really exciting times and I can’t wait to see what comes next.”

---

Congrats to Ishan and the whole team on their groundbreaking work. Stay tuned to MyMQ or visit the LuciGem website to follow Ishan’s exciting journey.