Dr. Lara Malins is an Associate Professor at the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University (ANU). She completed her B.A. in chemistry at Boston University in 2009 before relocating to The University of Sydney to undertake her PhD with Professor Richard Payne on the development of chemoselective peptide ligation strategies. In 2015, Lara joined the laboratory of Professor Phil Baran at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla as a National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein postdoctoral research fellow, where she worked on methods for the late-stage synthetic modification of peptides.

Dr. Malins returned to Australia in November 2017 to begin her independent career at the ANU, where she joined the Research School of Chemistry as a Lecturer and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Fellow. She is currently a Westpac Research Fellow and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide and Protein Science (CIPPS).

The Malins lab focuses on the development of new synthetic methods for chemical biology, drug discovery, and natural product synthesis. The group’s interest in leveraging underutilized modes of chemical activation, including electricity, light, and molecular strain, has led to the development of new strategies for the targeted functionalization of peptides, including highly tunable electrochemical oxidations and strain-promoted cycloaddition reactions. Dr. Malins has been recognized as an outstanding early career researcher as a recipient of the Australian Peptide Association’s John Wade Early Career Researcher Award and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute’s Rennie Medal.