The Waikato Branch was very pleased to host Professor Marie-Lise Bourguet-Kondracki, Director of Research CNRS at Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France during her recent visit to Hamilton. She gave a very well attended talk entitled, “Metabolomics and other innovative approaches to target marine natural products”.

University of Waikato

Chemquest 2023

Nearly 150 students from 18 schools in the greater Waikato and Bay of Plenty region participated in the annual ChemQuest competition, held at the university. This popular event featured music, demonstrations and a “glow show”. ChemQuest combines pop culture with chemistry and students compete for the ChemQuest trophy and cash prizes. It is a fun-filled evening for students studying NCEA level 2 chemistry and is always a hard fought contest. A team from Hill Labs consisting of Rebecca Fitzgerald, McGregor Small and Alana Horsley came along to help present the prizes and attempted the quiz themselves! Prizes were awarded as follows: 

• 1st Place: St John’s College (Raphael Ferdinands, William Hernandez, James Twaddle) 
• 2nd Place: St Peter’s School (Murdoch Dawe, Leon Lee, Zach Macaskill-Smith)
• 3rd Place: Hamilton Christian School (William Reid, Joshua Thompson, Liam Woods)
• 4th Place: Hamilton Girls’ High School (Adriana Katoa, Megan McInnes, Tia Merrilees)
• 5th Place: St John’s College (Jonas Daborn, Jasper Freeman, Peter Ladur)

The quiz was generously sponsored by the Waikato Branch of NZIC, Hill Labs and the School of Science, University of Waikato. Numerous chemistry staff and students contributed to make the event a very successful one.  

Chemistry PhD students Amber Bell, Lauren Gris, Kavitha Ranaweera, Matthew Risi and Jing Xu all gave presentations at the 2023 School of Science postgraduate conference. Lauren Gris won the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (Waikato Branch) and the Chemistry Social Club Award for the best chemistry-related oral presentation for her talk, “Diarylpyrole alkaloids from a Dictyodendrillid marine sponge, and its relationship to the nudibranch Goniobranchus aureomarginatus”.

Michèle Prinsep gave a plenary lecture at the 13th Asia Pacific Marine Biotechnology Conference (APMBC) combined with the 5th Australia New Zealand Marine Biotechnology Society (ANZMBS) Conference in Adelaide entitled “Probing nudibranch-prey interactions using chemical and biological tools”.

Congratulations to retired Professors Bill Henderson and Merilyn Manley-Harris who were recently awarded the title of Emeritus Professor at a function held by the School of Science.