A world-leading CSIRO chemist who was tipped to win a Nobel prize has been made redundant.
In September, the same month San Thang was nominated as a frontrunner for the illustrious prize in chemistry, he also ceased working as a senior researcher for the national science organisation, which has been hemorrhaging staff since June last year following severe budget cuts and a restructure.
As compensation, Dr Thang, who has worked at CSIRO for almost 30 years, was given an unpaid honorary fellowship. He continues to work at his former laboratory in Clayton, mainly supervising PhD students.
Speaking to Fairfax Media, Dr Thang, 60, said he did not want to criticise the CSIRO, saying the organisation "has given me a very good career".
Dr Thang, who fled Vietnam as a refugee aged 24, is one of a team of three CSIRO organic chemists who developed new plastics and polymers, using a process known as RAFT, that have been widely adopted by industry, including multinationals L'Oreal, IBM and Dulux.
"In Australia, the doors opened [for me] and I still want to be part of CSIRO and elsewhere to make use of my knowledge, I want to inspire people," said Dr Thang.
"Being a scientist, that's what I love to do", he said.
Dr Thang and his long-time collaborators Graeme Moad and Ezio Rizzardo were named Nobel prize contenders based on a Thomson Reuters analysis of their high number of citations - when other scientists cite the trio's research in their own.
Earlier this year the trio won the esteemed ATSE Clunies Ross Award, which recognises the outstanding application of science and technology providing economic, social and/or environmental benefit to Australia. They have published more than 100 scientific papers together.
Dr Thang fled Vietnam aboard a flimsy fishing boat that crossed the South China Sea to Malaysia, where he stayed in a refugee camp for several months before coming to Australia.
"All my family stayed behind and I wouldn't see them again for almost 20 years. It's still difficult to think of it," Dr Thang told his former alma mater, Griffith University, for an article posted on their website in October.
"It was a terrible, sometimes terrifying experience. I don't know how we made it. But when you survive something like that, it makes you stronger. That's what I took from it," he said.
Last financial year CSIRO cut 513 positions in response to a Labor government-enforced efficiency drive, a recruitment freeze implemented by the Abbott government and falling external revenue.
A CSIRO spokesman confirmed Dr Thang had been made redundant as part of these changes.
As a direct consequence of the federal government slashing $115 million from CSIRO's funding over four years in the May budget, the organisation is expected to lose another 400 researchers and support staff by mid next year in addition to 300 positions being cut as part of an internal restructure.
This month, the CSIRO staff association released new data showing the size and scale of the job cuts were larger than expected, reporting that 878 positions were to be cut by June 2015.
But another CSIRO spokesman said the organisation did not expect a major variation from the number of staff reductions it announced earlier this year, around 720 positions.
