Waikato NZIC Committee

The Waikato NZIC branch committee for 2024 is as follows:

Chairperson: Michael Mucalo

Secretary: Brendan Gill

Treasurer/Chemistry Education representative: Martina Pietsch Brown

Council delegate/Branch editor: Michèle Prinsep

Student representative: Amber Bell 

Committee members: Ben Dickson, Megan Grainger, Lauren Gris, Matthew Risi

Professor Nigel Richards from Cardiff University visited recently and gave a seminar entitled “The enzymology of formycin biosynthesis” in which he outlined his group’s elucidation of the roles played by some of the many enzymes involved in production of these bacterial metabolites. 

University of Waikato

Jade te Bogt completed her MSc thesis (supervised by Megan Grainger) on utilising olive leaves with oleuropein aglycone to enrich olive oil. Jade has joined Analytica Laboratories as Team Leader for the Oritain team. Oritain is one of Analytica’s clients and undertakes product origin verification testing via trace analysis (ICP-MS) and stable isotope ratio analysis (IR-MS). 

Harmanpreet Kaur carried out a summer research project with Megan Grainger and Linda Peters (Biological Sciences) to analyse chemical and physical properties of Chatham Island and Yemeni honeys. Harman has begun her MSc with Megan Grainger, co-supervised by Erica Prentice (Biological Sciences) to investigate the low diastase activity in manuka honey.

Daniel Mora has started his MSc with Ben Dickson, investigating a series of alternate syntheses of a DNA-PK inhibitor developed at the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre.