Dr Jones is an Associate Professor at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia. Originally from Manchester, England, he moved to RMIT in 2012 after working at the Universities of Cambridge and Durham. He has since gained dual nationality and built an internationally recognised team collaborating with partners in more than 11 countries including the UK, USA, India and Japan.

Dr Jones’ main interest is keeping our environment, particularly our water, safe. His work focuses on tracking the fate and behaviour of pollutants in the environment and assessing their effects on metabolism to help develop biochemical profiles of exposure. He has developed many new methods, particularly in Chromatography and NMR Spectroscopy for this purpose, which have led to several awards, including the Sir Paul Callaghan Medal. He was one of the first scientists in the world to work on the issue of pharmaceuticals in the environment and helped write the recommended standards for environmental metabolomics research.

Oliver is very keen to communicate science to the public and tweets as @dr_oli_jones. He has been quoted in hundreds of media articles around the world on the subject of the chemicals in the environment and has won several awards for his media engagement work.

Dr Jones is passionate about teaching and inspiring the next generation of Chemists and engages with students by bringing technology to the classroom. He recently developed a free mobile game “Chirality-2” as a fun tool to teach organic chemistry which has been downloaded over 9500 times in over 60 countries. He has received lectureships to travel to rural areas in Australia to talk about science and regularly takes part in outreach activities such as public lectures and school lab visits. Oliver also cares deeply about early-mid career researchers (EMCRs). He has served on the executive of the EMCR Forum of the Australian Academy of Science, and as EMCR representative on the Academy’s National Committee for Chemistry.