Rate My Professor Sally A. Brooker

Sally A. Brooker is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Otago, where she joined as a lecturer in 1991 following her BSc(Hons) and PhD from the University of Canterbury and a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor George Sheldrick at Göttingen University in Germany. She was promoted to full Professor in 2006, appointed one of the inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Professors in 2020, and named the 8th Mellor Professor in 2025. Brooker holds qualifications including CChem, FNZIC, FRSC, and FRSNZ. Her career includes supervision of a large multinational research team, Brooker's Bunch, and extensive international collaborations, such as with Professor Aaron Marshall at Canterbury for electrocatalysis, Professor Garry Hanan at Montreal for photocatalysis, and Professor Annie Powell at KIT for magnetic studies.

Brooker's research centers on designer functional transition metal and macrocyclic complexes, with key focuses on electrocatalysts and photocatalysts for green hydrogen production via the hydrogen evolution reaction, carbon dioxide reduction to fuels and chemicals, spin crossover complexes for nanoswitches, single molecule magnets, and green polymerization catalysts for lactide and CO2/epoxide copolymerization. She has published over 230 refereed journal articles, achieving an h-index of 51 (Web of Science), with recent works including 'Testing mixed metal bimetallic, and monometallic, cryptates for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution' (Dalton Transactions, 2025), 'Complexes of a noncyclic carbazole-based N5-donor Schiff base' (Inorganic Chemistry, 2024), and 'Iron(II) spin crossover complexes of tetradentate Schiff-bases' (Dalton Transactions, 2024). Her contributions have earned awards such as the University of Otago Distinguished Research Medal (2015), RSNZ Hector Medal (2017), 28th Inorganic Chemistry Award from RACI (2017), MNZM for services to science (2017), Easterfield Medal (1999), and Maurice Wilkins Prize (2009). Brooker leads initiatives like the German-NZ Green Hydrogen alliance and seeks collaborations in sustainable catalysis.