Colin Raston

Unboiling an egg Ovalbumin is the protein which makes up around two-thirds of the white of an egg. When an egg is cooked, the ovalbumin changes conformation from its folded and soluble form to an insoluble all-β-sheet structure with exposed hydrophobic regions, leading to aggregation. This is a classic example of protein denaturation, defined as the loss of the quaternary, tertiary and secondary structures that are present in the protein's native state, by application of some external chemical or radiative stress (including heat). In order to "unboil" the egg, the individual protein strands must be separated from the aggregate and then re-folded back to their native form. Raston had the idea of using mechanical energy from spinning the aggregate to achieve this and developed vortex fluidic technology to implement his idea. Using it to unboil an egg (at least in part) was meant as a demonstration of the technology and won Raston and colleagues the 2015 Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry. and improving the production of biodiesel.

Honours and awards Raston was recognised for his professional achievements with Fellowships in the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Raston served as the Vice President of the RACI in 1995–96, winning the H. G. Smith Memorial Medal that year, and went on to serve as President the following year. He has received several RACI awards, including the Burrows Award in 1994, which is the premier award of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of the RACI. In 2002, he was recognised with the Green Chemistry Challenge Award and went on to take the Leighton Memorial Medal,

In 2018, Raston was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA).