Chemistry with the community: Fenarimols open-source drug discovery for eumycetoma and Evaluation of a high school chemistry outreach program

Abstract

This thesis presents research in the fields of open-source drug discovery and high school chemistry outreach, united by a motivation to equalise access: to medicine through more equitable drug discovery and to tertiary education via outreach.

The first part of the thesis presents a collaborative project as part of the Open Source Mycetoma Consortium (MycetOS) seeking treatments for the neglected tropical disease eumycetoma, a chronic skin infection mainly caused by the fungus Madurella mycetomatis affecting over one billion people every year, mostly in impoverished communities in tropical and subtropical regions. MycetOS was conceived to address this urgent unmet demand using principles of open and transparent collaboration, and has identified six promising series of compounds with strong potency against M. mycetomatis.

The second part of this thesis describes evaluation of a high school chemistry outreach program as part of the widening participation (WP) framework at an Australian university. WP in tertiary education has been positioned as a key driver of economic growth in various educational policies. University-led outreach in Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) areas can contribute to WP agendas through the goals of increasing the participation of students in STEM tertiary education and the STEM professional workforce. However, there are logistical and sustainability challenges with the in-person delivery of STEM outreach in the Australian geographical context. Additionally, there is a paucity of literature exploring alternative to in-person delivery such as virtual STEM outreach. This research aimed to address (i) the challenges of in-person STEM outreach, and (ii) the literature gaps in virtual STEM outreach research by evaluating the Kickstart Spectroscopy workshop at the University of Sydney, which delivers virtual (VK) and in-person (PK) chemistry outreach to high school students.