University of Waikato

Congratulations to Jing Xu who gained her PhD in an interdisciplinary chemistry and engineering project which involved the study of mussel shell/polypropylene/harakeke composites under the MBIE funded Amiomio Aotearoa programme. She was supervised by Michael Mucalo (chemistry) and Kim Pickering (engineering). 

Congratulations also to Amber Bell has been awarded the 2026 AOAC International Harvey W. Wiley Scholarship award.

Several interns from France are visiting. Evann Mingant from the European School of Chimie Polymers and Materials is carrying out a four-month internship with Megan Grainger. He will be investigating the antioxidant properties of manuka honey. Three students from Sigma Clermont are visiting for five months. Chloé Beauvais and Titouan Bouillo are working with Michèle Prinsep on various marine and terrestrial natural products projects and Anna-Louise Deronne is working with Tameryn Stringer on preparing some potential metallo-antimicrobials.

Year 13 students from Katikati College spent the day at the university synthesising aspirin and learning about some of our instrumentation (NMR, IR and GC-MS) for the NCEA level 3 spectroscopy standard. Year 13 students from Rototuna High School also visited for the spectroscopy tour.