Nature Chemistry publication
A paper was recently published in Nature Chemistry from Shane Telfer’s group (Hetero-interpenetrated metal–organic frameworks. David Perl, Seok J. (Subo) Lee, Alan Ferguson, Geoffrey B. Jameson, and Shane G. Telfer, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-023-01277-z).
The paper shows how interpenetrated MOFs can be deliberately built up from two different lattices and how the properties of these lattices can complement each other. For example, the team showed how one can be chiral and the other catalytic to create an asymmetric catalyst. The origins of this work extend back almost a decade to Alan’s work as a postdoc (he’s now a geochemist at Contact Energy), which became the main focus of David’s PhD (he’s now a software engineer at the Diamond Light Source, UK). Geoff (now Emeritus Professor at Massey) devised some penetrating synchrotron experiments and Subo (who is now an R&D Scientist at Captivate Technology) polished off the catalysis experiments and responded to some perceptive refereeing comments.
Welcome
We welcomed Cynthia Andriani, who is doing an industrial PhD at Fonterra Research and Development Centre, Palmerston North. Her research topic is looking at Connecting structure and rheology in dairy protein concentrates. Cynthia is doing her PhD through the University of Auckland with Associate Professor Catherine Whitby as her co-supervisor.
Qayyum Shehzad has joined the Whitby group as a PhD student. Qayyum is funded by the Riddet Institute and will be researching Interfacial rheology of plant proteins.
Humaira Ismail has joined the Waterland group as part of her final year of a Bachelor of Food Tech (Hons) from Singapore. Humaira will be looking at Correlating physical and spectral properties of food emulsions using Raman spectroscopy.
PhD completion
Congratulations to Bruce Chilton who successfully defended his PhD thesis titled, Studies towards thermodynamically stable G-quadruplexes embedded in canonical DNA duplexes. Bruce was supervised by Associate Professor Vyacheslav V. Filichev and Dr Tracy Hale.
Seminars
The School of Natural Sciences at Massey University continued their seminar series where two chemistry academics, Associate Professor Catherine Whitby and Professor Mark Waterland, presented some of their recent research. Catherine Whitby gave an intriguing talk entitled, Protein adsorption at oil-water interfaces, highlighting the effect polysaccharides have at the surface. Mark Waterland gave a presentation entitled, Finding needles in haystacks with Raman spectroscopy, discussing some of the group’s work during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Outreach
The Manawatū campus of Massey University held some outreach programs inviting Year 12 and 13 students from various high schools from the central North Island region. The students completed a limonene distillation experiment, offering a hands-on experience in chemistry. This not only provided a practical understanding of chemistry principles to strengthen concepts taught in their classroom but also offered a glimpse into the vibrant academic environment of chemistry at the university.
It has been great having some senior students from Palmerston North Boys High School doing Massey's first-year chemistry course. Associate Professor Catherine Whitby visited the school to talk with the students and their teacher, Dr Stephen van Eyk, about the thermodynamics classes they are currently taking.
