NZIC Analytical Chemistry competition 2024
This annual event was held on 11 June. Twenty-four teams of students from twenty schools across the Waikato/Bay of Plenty/South Auckland regions sent teams of four students to the University for the day to carry out the analysis for this year’s competition.
“The task was to analyse the individual levels of nickel and sulfate ions in a sample of zinc sulfate and to use these values to determine how many water molecules were associated with each nickel sulfate molecule. One pair from each group of four analysed their samples to determine the nickel ion content, while the other half of the team determined the sulfate ion level. Although this was quite a challenging task in the time available, it was very close between the top few teams,” said competition judge and key organiser, Michèle Prinsep.
The competition allowed enthusiastic Year 13 chemists to spend a day in the University laboratories working on an experiment that would be beyond the resources of their schools. Although competition was intense, the main emphasis was on enjoying the experience of working in a chemistry laboratory at the university and meeting students from other schools. The winning team received $280 and a trophy, with prize money also awarded to all other placegetters thanks to the generosity of the sponsors.
The day involved many of the Chemistry Department staff in setting up the competition and supervising the labs. Bryant Hall and Student Village provided excellent lunches (sponsored by the Waikato Branch of the NZIC) and Hill Laboratories and the Waikato Branch of the NZIC generously donated the prizes.
Results were:
- 1st Prize: Waikato Diocesan School for Girls
(Joie Lin, Claire McKelvie, Emilee Mehrtens, Diny Zhou) - 2nd Prize: St Peter’s School
(Amelia Keir, Leon Lee, Tim Qian, Olivia Skiffington) - 3rd Prize: Tauranga Girls’ College 1
(Kyla Chen, Payten Conder, Erina Islam, Jin Lee) - 4th Prize: Hamilton Boys’ High School
(Rohit Gulla, Andrew Kang, Aaron Raturaga, Raycorn Ruan) - 5th Prize: Hamilton Girls’ High School 1
(Evelyn Anderson-Wharekura, Amanda Hesahni Sadisi, Tia Merrilees, Nisha Moorfield)
University of Waikato
We warmly welcome Tameryn (Tam) Stringer who joins Chemistry as a Senior Lecturer. Tameryn’s PhD research at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa involved development of metal-based antimicrobials. She graduated in 2014 then worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCT and at Lund University. In 2020, she moved to the UK to take up the position of Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of Leeds until she moved to the University of East Anglia in 2021 as a Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry. Tameryn is a synthetic chemist with expertise in the design, synthesis and characterisation of organic and metal-based compounds as biological agents. Her research interest involves working towards the development of metallodrugs to treat disease. She is also interested in understanding the mechanism of action and identifying the biological targets of these compounds by means of developing chemical tools and using chemical biology approaches to do so.
Megan Grainger and her PhD student Amber Bell spent one month at the University of Technology Sydney working with Distinguished Professor Philip Doble to analyse heavy metals in bees. This work is part of Megan's Marden Fast-Start research, "Metal incorporation into honeybee brains and cells: at what cost to the hive?"
Doctoral students Lauren Gris and Nikki Webb, both supervised by Michèle Prinsep, represented Chemistry admirably in the university final of the three minute thesis (3MT) competition. Nikki also presented her most recent research findings on tremorgenic compounds isolated from fungal endophyte-infected perennial ryegrasses to an in-house Endophyte Innovation Conference in Palmerston North.
A group of enthusiastic Year 10 students from Trident High School, Whakatane, attended a Chemistry “Magic” Show presented by Michèle Prinsep and really enjoyed the opportunity to get up close and hands-on with chemistry.
Action from the Trident High School visit
Scion
Scion has had a double French connection with Dr Claire Mayer from INRAe (Montpellier, France), hosted by Scion’s Dr Marie Joo Le Guen. Technically, Marie is French, but she also claims to be Kiwi. In addition to discovering Freddo Frogs (no comment), they researched using lignocellulosic biomass in advanced manufacturing. This strengthens the Scion-INRAe relationship, which has already led to the creation of an International Associated Lab for biobased products, LIA BIOMATA and Scion being part of a Horizon Europe project as a work package leader (UPWEARS).
The other French connection was a student exchange with PhD students Janet Reid (Scion/University of Otago) (under Dr Marie Joo Le Guen & Associated Professor Lyn Wise) and Lucie Perret, who were working on natural polymers for high-value applications. Lucie came to New Zealand as part of the Science NZ joint linkage call between INRAE and SNZ and arrived just in time to join the Scion crew in the X-ray synchrotron experiments in Melbourne in July. As the second part of the exchange, Janet will travel to France in September to work at INRAE (Montpellier), IMT Mines Albi (Albi), and visit the Soleil synchrotron in Paris-Saclay to carry out micro/nanotomography.
Scion’s Dr Yi Chen, working with New Zealand and international colleagues, had their work published in Nature Food and made the cover. The article, “A water-soluble label for food products prevents packaging waste and counterfeiting” looked at using nanocomposite inks to provide a non-toxic and environmentally friendly way to label food that uses structural colour to offer a range of printable colours.
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