The Chemistry Study Program of FMIPA UNY held a visiting professor program by presenting Prof. Madya Dr. Melati Khairuddean from the School of Chemical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Her field of expertise relates to natural materials, liquid crystals, and the synthesis of bioactive compounds for anti-cancer.

In this program, Prof. Madya. Melati Khairuddean and Prof. Dr. Sri Handayani will collaborate in teaching the subject of Structure and Reactivity of Organic Compounds and conducting joint publications. Also Prof. Madya. Dr. Melati Khairuddean and Dr. Retno Arianingrum will collaborate in teaching Chemical Research Topics courses. This activity will be carried out in three months (October-December 2020) online.

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020, Prof. Melati gave a lecture on research topics for organic chemistry to the 5th semester students of the UNY chemistry study program. Prof. Melati discusses in detail about the topic of natural chemical research. He conveyed the results of his research from the synthesis of natural materials. Initially Prof. Melati isolated pure compounds from plants from different parts, namely pure compounds, extractions, and fractions including Garcinia atroviridis, Garcinia hombroniana, Strobilanthes crispus, Clinanthus nutans, and Teucrium barbeyanum (Libya). The results showed that most compounds gave good cytotoxicity activity but the combination of several compounds (fraction and extraction) gave better cytotoxicity activity results.