Manawatū News

Welcome to our new chemistry lecturer, Calum Gordon! Calum accepted the offer of a fixed term lectureship at Massey. Before joining us here in the Manawatu, Calum completed a PhD in chemistry and a postdoctoral fellowship at VUW in the group of Dr Nathaniel Davis.

Congratulations to all our graduates from the May graduation ceremony and especially to BSc (Chemistry) graduate Cara Bosman who was the valedictorian speaker! Cara is now working as a research assistant in Shane Telfer’s labs.

Thakshila Dayananda (PhD student) and Dr Bruce Chilton (postdoctoral fellow) joined a research project run by Professor Vyacheslav Filichev, Emeritus Professor Geoffrey B. Jameson, Dr Elena Harjes and Dr Pat Edwards on characterisation of DNA aptamers with illicit drugs. The project is in collaboration with the DNA aptamer team at ESR, Porirua.

PhD student Marryllyn Donaldson gave a presentation about her research at the ACCC9 (Asian Coordination Chemistry Conference) in Thailand in February. The title of her talk was, “Coordination trends for 2,5-bis((1,2,3-triazol-4-yl)methoxy)pyrazine ligands”. Marryllyn is supervised by Mark Waterland.

PhD students from Shane Telfer and Catherine Whitby’s groups attended the MacDiarmid Institute Research meetings on 3-4 April in Wellington. Several delivered presentations on their research and they all participated in career development workshops during the meeting.