Rico Tabor completed his undergraduate and post-graduate degrees at the University of Bristol, UK. The topic of his PhD was investigating the kinetics and aggregation of surfactants in non-aqueous solvents, with particular focus on nanoparticle stabilisation. Rico came to Australia in 2009 as a post-doc at the University of Melbourne, exploring interactions in soft colloidal systems to understand formulation problems using atomic force microscopy.
Since 2012, Rico has worked at Monash University, where he is currently a Professor and Australian Research Council Mid-Career Industry Fellow. He leads the Soft Materials and Colloids Laboratory within the School of Chemistry, and this group’s research focuses on sustainable approaches to colloid science, including novel surfactants from green feedstocks, stabilisation using carbon nanomaterials (especially graphene oxide), applications of neutron, X-ray and light scattering in studies of soft and self-assembled systems, and sustainable coating technologies.