Penny Brothers

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Penny Brothers was born and grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, and completed BSc and MSc(Hons) degrees in chemistry at the University of Auckland. In 1979 she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and set off for Stanford University to begin a PhD in chemistry under the supervision of Professor Jim Collman. Her PhD thesis, and much of her subsequent research work, has centered around the chemistry of porphyrin complexes. In 1986 she returned to Auckland and spent two years working as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Warren Roper in the Department of Chemistry, focussing on organometallic chemistry. In 1988 she took up her current academic position at the University of Auckland. She has been a visiting scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2003, 2005, 2006) and a visiting professor at the University of California at Davis (1993), the University of Heidelberg (2003) and the University of Burgundy (2004, 2006). She has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award for 2007. Her current research brings together her interests in porphyrin chemistry, the main group elements and organometallic chemistry. She investigates how the porphyrin ligand can be used to modify the chemistry of elements such as boron and bismuth, and as a ligand in complexes containing unusual chemical bonds between transition metal and main group elements. She has a number of research collaborations in NZ and internationally.