From a small town to the nanoscale frontier, Dr. Renee Goreham is proving that big breakthroughs can come from tiny places.

Growing up in a rural corner of South Australia, Renee now works with materials so unimaginably small that you'd have to slice a 30 cm ruler 30 billion times to reach the size of a nanometer. These incredibly tiny building blocks — nanomaterials — are at the heart of her research.

As a physicist and nanotechnologist at the University of Newcastle, Renee is using nanomaterials to tackle some of the world’s toughest health challenges. Her current mission? To create a non-invasive breathalyser that could detect lung cancer in its earliest stages — before symptoms even appear. With no current screening program for lung cancer, this could be a game-changer: affordable, accessible, and life-saving.

After completing her PhD at the University of South Australia in 2014, Renee joined the University of Newcastle in 2019, where she now serves as a Senior Lecturer in Physics. In 2023, she was awarded the NSW Community Outreach Award by the Australian Institute of Physics for her outstanding dedication to bringing science into everyday lives.

Through her groundbreaking research and award-winning science communication, Renee is bridging the gap between the lab bench and the real world — proving that physics isn’t just about equations; it’s about impact.