University of Otago, Department of Chemistry
Postgraduate Symposium 2023
On 21 July we held the Annual Postgraduate Symposium coupled with the NZIC poster session. It was a great event, with excellent talks and posters presented across the board. Prizes were awarded for Best Talk (Elouan Hay-Fourmand), Runners Up (Jackson Henneveld and Kieran Demonte) and Best Poster (Sam McIntyre).
Thank you to the Department of Chemistry, NZIC Otago Branch and all participants, helpers and judges for making the day possible.
NZIC Otago Branch Annual Quiz
The NZIC Otago branch annual quiz took place on 15 Aug and was well attended by both undergraduate and postgraduate students and staff across several departments and disciplines. There were 11 teams of 5-6 people and Dave McMorran did an amazing job at ‘quiz-master’ for another year running. The best team name went to Can’t UAG us with strong competition from The BROWN bit at the top of the column and The Noble Asses. Third place went to 404:Answer not found who were predominantly members of the Garden research group. Second place went to The Barbie Yields who were predominantly members of the Ennis group. And first place went to The Oppenhomies - a group of very talented physics students. There were only 4 marks from a total of 75 separating the top three places so it was a very tightly fought battle for the top spot. Come along next time to be in line for some prizes (and free pizza)!
Garden Group
PhD student Nicholas Smith attended two European conferences – Energy Landscapes: Theory and Applications in Porquerolls, France and Cluster Meeting 2023 in Prague, Czech Republic. Nick presented a poster and flash talk at Energy Landscapes and an invited “Hot Topic” talk at Cluster Meeting, for which he was awarded a best talk prize.
Green Group
The Green group welcomes Koen Hoek from the Netherlands for his internship project for the next five months. Koen is off to a flying start and attended departmental ten pin bowling soon after landing in the country!
Plant and Food Research
Dahlias against Diabetes
Plant & Food Research’s Dunedin-based natural products chemists contributed to the development of a dahlia flower extract that has just been launched commercially: Dahlia4 - Natural Glucose Support – Dahlia4.com.
Elaine Burgess (retired 2020) and Nigel Perry did a lot of work with University of Otago physiology researchers, led by Associate Professor Alexander Tups, identifying the bioactive flavonoids that improved glycaemic response in a mouse model. These are two yellow chalcones and an aurone, which act together for oral activity. Catherine Sansom continued analyses of these compounds in support of the commercial development by Christchurch natural products company Aroma NZ Ltd.
Coincidentally (yes, really!) a paper which describes the in vivo activity, safety and efficacy in a human trial and mode of action has just been published: dahlia flower extract has anti-diabetic properties by improving insulin function in the brain | Life Metabolism | Oxford Academic (oup.com).
