NZIC Canterbury AGM
The AGM for the Canterbury Branch of the NZIC was held on 7 December at the University of Canterbury. NZIC President Associate Professor Joanne Harvey gave a presidential address reflecting on the roles of chemistry and chemists in our society, the past and present state of NZIC, and considering what we might want to achieve in 2024 and the future. Also presented was recent work from Professor Harvey’s research group in drug discovery and natural product (and analogue) synthesis including recent work on the metabolites of the common food colouring tartrazine.
The following offices were confirmed during the election of Committee Members:
- Chair – Michael Edmonds
- Secretary – Sarah Masters
- Treasurer – Darren Saunders
- Council Delegate – Sarah Masters
- Chemical Education Group Representative – TBD
- Branch Editors – Darren Saunders & Jan Wikaira
- Committee Members – Nic Bason (Industry), Lily Hermanspahn & Paula Brooksby
- Student Representatives – Winter Zakaria (self-nomination), Michelle Klein & Askin Eldiven
Successful PhD completions
Congratulations go the following students in the School of Physical and Chemical Science, University of Canterbury, who have recently successfully defended their PhD theses:
- Sathy Akhil, whose thesis, "Synthesis and characterisation of diamidinium and allyldiamidinium ionic liquids" was supervised by Owen Curnow and Vladamir Golovko.
- Sara Mirzakhani, whose thesis titled, “Supported metal clusters and nanoparticles for CO2 hydrogenation to value-added hydrocarbons” was supervised by Deborah Crittenden (SPCS) and Alex Yip and Aaron Marshall (chemical and process engineering, CAPE). She left immediately for a job based in Dunedin.
- Jamie Bridson, whose thesis was on, “The presence and release of plastic additives in microplastic pollution: an Aotearoa / New Zealand perspective”, work that was supervised by Sally Gaw and co-supervised by Robert Abbel, Dawn Smith (both Scion, Rotorua) and Grant Northcott (Northcott Research Consultants Limited).
- Hector Ulises Mancilla-Diaz, whose thesis was titled, ‘The design, synthesis, and evaluation of novel peptidomimetics able to modulate endothelial cell migration’, supervised by Rudi Marquez-Mazlin (senior supervisor) and Khoon Lim (co-supervisor).
