Highlights of the 2009 New South Wales Southern Highlands Conference on Heterocyclic Chemistry

Roger Read was a co-founder of the New South Wales Southern Highlands Conference on Heterocyclic Chemistry, with Professor David StC. Black and Associate Professor Michael J. Gallagher. He has been Secretary of the Conference Organising Committee since its inception and has enjoyed two terms as its President, in 1996 and 2004. He received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Sydney University, and after postdoctoral appointments at Imperial College, London, the University of Auckland and the University of Melbourne, and a period as Research Scientist in the Materials Research Laboratories, Maribyrnong, a Defence support facility, he joined the University of New South Wales in 1985, where he is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry. His research contributions have been in the broad area of heterocyclic chemistry, and they have ranged from natural product chemistry through energetic materials research and applied chemistry of various classes of heterocycles, including perhydrobipyrimidines, indoles, biisoquinolines, cyclic acetals, and fluorous heterocycles.