Dr Craig Francis

Craig Francis qualified for his Ph.D. (1991) at The University of Adelaide under the supervision of Dr. David Ward studying the synthesis of reduced quinolines related to virantmycin. As a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cambridge with Professor Andrew Holmes (1991–1992), he studied the asymmetric synthesis of the marine natural product obtusenyne. Craig joined CSIRO as a postdoctoral research fellow with Dr. Andy Liepa in 1993 and over the following decade rose through the ranks to Principal Research Scientist.

Until late 2024, Craig was a Principal Research Scientist in the Drug Discovery Chemistry Team at CSIRO in Melbourne. He is a synthetic organic/medicinal chemist and a 31-year veteran at CSIRO, where he worked predominantly in the fields of bioactive molecule discovery and development (crop protection, animal health, and human health) and process development/contract synthesis, exploiting areas of chemistry with potential commercial value. He played significant or leading roles in the chemistry side of many collaborative commercial projects with clients including both large multinationals and small Australian biotech companies and was instrumental in the construction of CSIRO’s proprietary fragment library. Clients/collaborators included DuPont Crop Protection, Food Science Australia, AMRAD Operations Pty Ltd, F.H. Faulding & Co. Ltd, Schering-Plough Animal Health, Pfizer, Avexa, CRC for Cancer Therapeutics, MecRx, Vittail, Gretals.

He led a long-term collaboration in novel heterocycle synthesis, co-supervising Honours and PhD students with Prof Mike Perkins at Flinders University (2004 to 2022) and led collaborative antimycobacterial and prostate cancer drug discovery projects with Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine & Health (Chinese Academy of Sciences) (2016 to 2022). He was granted adjunct academic status at Flinders in 2024.

His abiding interest is in the development of synthetic methods for the preparation of novel or uncommon heterocyclic ring systems.

Craig is a Scientific Editor member and sole Australian representative on the Editorial Control Board of the platinum open-access organic chemistry journal “Arkivoc” - https://www.arkat-usa.org/about-arkivoc/editorial-board/.