Alison Downard

Alison Joy Downard is a New Zealand academic, and has been a full professor at the University of Canterbury since 2009. Her work focuses on surface chemistry, electrochemistry and nanoscale grafted layers. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, has received the R. H. Stokes Medal, and was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Rennes 1.

Education Downard attended Te Puke High School. She went to Otago University to study home science but ended up graduating with a Bachelor of Science in electrochemistry in 1979 instead.

In 2017, Downard was featured as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's 150 women in 150 words.

Downard was a Principal Investigator at the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. Her research on chemical modifications to surfaces at the nanoscale has enabled new electrodes to be discovered. Her findings have implications for energy storage.

Awards In 2014, Downard was awarded the R. H. Stokes medal by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. The same year she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Rennes 1.

Selected works