Professor Gentle is a graduate of the University of Sydney with BSc (Hons) and PhD in Physical Chemistry. He has been at the University of Queensland since 1993 and during that time he has held a number of leadership positions including Director of the Brisbane Surface Analysis Facility, Deputy Director of the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis and Program Leader (Clean Energy Production and Utilisation) in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials. Most recently he held the position of Head of Science at the Australian Synchrotron (2008-2010). This involved leading the scientific program of Australia’s largest scientific facility, with over 3000 Australian and international users and over 30 in-house scientific staff including beamline scientists and accelerator physicists. Prof. Gentle is also now part of the leadership team of the Centre for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE) at UQ. He has also been on a number of boards and is currently the Chair of the Australian Nanotechnology Alliance.
He is an internationally recognised leader in the field of interfacial science, particularly in the fabrication and characterisation of organic thin films with applications in energy storage, optoelectronics, sensing and biology. He has developed synchrotron and neutron methods for thin film analysis and has been instrumental in the development of beamlines at major facilities in Australia and overseas.
