University of Auckland
Events
IUPAC Global Women’s Breakfast
Hapori Mātai Matū ChemSoc, Auckland University Women in Science, NZIC Auckland Branch and Merck Life Sciences co-hosted the IUPAC Global Women’s Breakfast on Tuesday 27 February.
Inaugural Professorial Lectures
Professor Geoff Waterhouse gave his inaugural lecture entitled, “Nanospace: the final frontier” on Thursday 29 February. Professor Siew-Young Quek gave her inaugural lecture entitled, “A passion for food” on Thursday 14 March. Professor Geoff Willmott gave his inaugural lecture entitled, “From diamonds to droplets” on Tuesday 21 May.
Staff successes
Congratulations to Professor Conrad Perera for having been elected a Fellow of the prestigious International Academy of Food Science & Technology (IAFoST) of the International Union of Food Science & Technology (IUFoST) with a membership of over 300,000 worldwide. The IAFoST collectively forms a diverse pool of scientific expertise in food science and technology and related disciplines from which IUFoST draws non-aligned expert advice on scientific matters. Fellows serve as independent professional leaders who engage and endorse high standards of ethics and scientific endeavours. The induction ceremony is scheduled during the 22nd World Congress of Food Science and Technology in Rimini, Italy, from 8- 12 September 2024.
Congratulations to Dr Lisa Pilkington and her team for leading the country’s first large scale trial of using wastewater to monitor alcohol consumption, a groundbreaking effort with profound implications for public health monitoring. Their pioneering study not only demonstrated the efficacy of this method but also challenged stereotypes and highlighted disparities in alcohol use among different communities, paving the way for informed decision-making in public health policy. The article can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asia.202301120
News clip featuring Lisa’s research on alcohol consumption
Lisa’s interview on RNZ
UoA News and opinion
One News
NZ Herald
RNZ
Congratulations to Dr Danae Larsen who, after a series of sensory exams, has become one of only two accredited sensory experts for olive oil in New Zealand. This will allow her to train an internationally accredited sensory panel for olive oil, which does not exist in New Zealand, to be utilised for olive oil research and certification by the NZ Olive Oil industry.
Student successes
Publications
Congratulations to PhD student Jordan McIvor, supervised by Dr Davide Mercadante, for publishing her latest research in Nature Communications. The article is titled, “DNA binding redistributes activation domain ensemble and accessibility in pioneer factor Sox2” and features cross-disciplinary research investigating how intrinsic disorder contributes to genetic transcription in physiology and disease. The research contains a series of investigations carried out via single-molecule FRET spectroscopy and NMR experiments interfaced to molecular simulations. Jordan curated all the computational aspects of the project in collaboration with teams of experimental scientists at the University of Iceland, the Max Planck institute in Frankfurt and the University of Copenhagen. The article is available here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45847-2
Congratulations to Kapish Gobindlal, supervised by Professor Jon Sperry, for his paper entitled, “Mechanochemical destruction of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in aqueous film-forming foams and contaminated soil” which was chosen as the most outstanding paper published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Environmental Science: Advances in 2023. The editorial board, advisory board and associate editors decided on the winner based on several factors, including article downloads, altmetrics, and citations:
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/va/d4va90010c
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/va/d3va00099k
The United States Department of Defense has very recently awarded a large project grant to fund the testing of this technology at scale here in Auckland in collaboration with the Centre for Green Chemical Science.
PhD completions
Congratulations to Food Science students Pattarasuda Rawiwan and Boyang Xu for passing their PhD oral exams without corrections.
Internships and prizes
Congratulations to our 3rd year Food Science student, Mr Zan Goh, who was selected to join the 10-week internship project at the Fonterra Research and Development Centre (Palmerston North) during the summer. Zan won the 3rd presentation prize at the end of the internship.
AUT News
New staff
Dr Emma Davison joined AUT in April to begin her independent research career in organic and medicinal chemistry. Emma obtained a Bachelor of Science in Medicinal Chemistry and a BSc (Hons) with First Class Honours from the University of Auckland (2011-2014). She completed her PhD under the supervision of Professor Jon Sperry at the University of Auckland in 2018, receiving a trifecta of awards for her PhD thesis, including the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Best Doctoral Thesis in 2018. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Auckland (supervised by Professor Dame Margaret Brimble, 2018-2021) and at Simon Fraser University (supervised by Professor Rob Britton, 2021-2022), Emma co-founded Cloudburst Biotech, a pre-clinical stage biotechnology company using innovative chemistry to generate a new era in RNA-therapeutics for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
At AUT, Emma is building her independent research programme which sits at the interface of chemistry and biology. Her team are exploring novel chemical modification strategies to enhance the effectiveness of oligonucleotide (RNA) therapies for the treatment of a broad spectrum of diseases. Emma welcome enquiries from any students who are interested in pursuing a BSc (Hons), MSc or PhD in an exciting, multidisciplinary area of research. She is actively seeking motivated students to work with her to change the face of medicine. Emma also welcomes any opportunities to develop productive collaborations with researchers in both industry and academia who are aligned with her research interests.
In May, Associate Professor Jon Kitchen joined the AUT chemistry team. Jon obtained his BSc (Hons) and PhD (2009) from Otago before undertaking postdoctoral research at Trinity College Dublin (2010 - 2013). In 2013 he joined the University of Southampton in the UK as a lecturer where he started his independent career. In 2018 Jon moved back to Aotearoa before joining AUT this month. Jon runs an f-block materials research program with a particular focus on the immobilisation of luminescent and/or catalytic lanthanide materials onto surfaces. Luminescent molecular sensor development is a key theme in the JK research group, and this has led to many productive collaborations with research groups around the world. Jon is an associate investigator in the MacDiarmid Institute and He Honoka Hauwai (German-NZ Green Hydrogen Centre).
Events
Dr Jack Chen was an invited speaker in a cheminar hosted by Thieme on 27 March and gave a talk entitled, “Biomimetic catalyst systems from the self-assembly of amphiphiles”. The cheminar is available to watch at: https://doi.org/10.52843/cassyni.jcwdq9.
Congratulations
Dr Jack Chen, Bryan Andres Tiban Anrango, Dr Mohinder Naiya and Dr Victor Yim co-founded Spherelose Ltd (https://spherelose.com/) together with Michael Fielding from AUT Ventures. This start-up aims to commercialise cellulose-based surfactant technology for applications in personal care, agricultural and industrial applications. Significant support has been received from the Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge, the MacDiarmid Institute and KiwiNet for commercialisation activities.
Bryan Andres Tiban Anrango, Dr Mohinder Naiya, Josh Van Dongen, Olivia Matich and Dr Jack Chen published the article, “Nanoprecipitation to produce hydrophobic cellulose nanospheres for water-in-oil Pickering emulsions” in Cellulose (Springer), in collaboration with Associate Professor Catherine Whitby from Massey University.
Outreach
The latest batch of Chemistry Matters videos by Professor Allan Blackman has been released on YouTube and can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR3IJD4eYfwTt6lZxeiiCDbABcukAr9wr
The latest group of 20 videos cover kinetics, electrochemistry and organic chemistry and will be of use to a wide spectrum of chemistry students. One of the videos has already had over 800 views while only having been up for 4 days, so there are certainly some keen students out there! The titrations video has had 39,000 views, which isn’t to be sneezed at!!
Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre News
Published Papers
“Bora-diaza-indacene based fluorescent probes for simultaneous visualisation of lipid droplets and endoplasmic reticulum" by Peter J Choi; Yuki Tatenaka; Katsuya Noguchi; Munetaka Ishiyama; William Alexander Denny; Jiney Jose, ChemMedChem, 2024, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cbic.202400415.
Abstract: Organelle selective fluorescent probes, especially those capable of concurrent detection of specific organelles, are of benefit to the research community in delineating the interplay between various organelles and the impact of such interaction in maintaining cellular homeostasis and its disruption in the diseased state. Although very useful, such probes are synthetically challenging to design due to the stringent lipophilicity requirement posed by different organelles, and hence, the lack of such probes being reported so far. This work details the synthesis, photophysical properties, and cellular imaging studies of two bora-diaza-indacene based fluorescent probes that can specifically and simultaneously visualise lipid droplets and endoplasmic reticulum; two organelles suggested having close interactions and implicated in stress-induced cellular dysfunction and disease progression.
New students
We welcome Yuchen He, a new PhD student at the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre, supervised by Dr Leon Lu. She is funded by an HRC project in collaboration with the School of Pharmacy, University of Auckland and Fudan University, China. Her thesis focuses on improving solid tumour lymphocyte infiltration using bioinspired nanosystems involving the synthesis of NO-donor and platinum drug conjugates. She is excited about the new journey ahead.
