NZIC Analytical Chemistry Competition 2026

The annual analytical chemistry competition was held on 16 June. Twenty-four schools from the Greater Waikato-Bay of Plenty and 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 zinc and sulfate ions in a sample of zinc sulphate and to use these values to determine how many water molecules were associated with each zinc sulphate molecule. One pair from each group of four analysed their samples to determine the zinc 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.

Thanks to all of the chemistry staff involved in setting up the competition, supervising the labs, and giving talks. Bryant Hall and Student Village provided excellent lunches (sponsored by the Waikato Branch of the NZIC), and Hill Labs and the Waikato Branch of the NZIC generously donated the prizes.

Results were:

• 1^st Prize: Waikato Diocesan School for Girls (Jasper Chen, Gabriella Shuitemaker, Sarah Wang, Cate Young)
• 2^nd Prize: Mount Maunganui College (Nathan Appleton, Mani Catanach, Skye Faile, Brooke McLean)
• 3^rd Prize: Hamilton Boys' High School (TJ Lee, Ian Park, Salah Rishard, Angad Sandhu)
• 4^th Prize: John Paul College (Samual Makara Fang, Maggie Kwok, Charles Meurisse, Sara Smith)
• 5^th Prize: Pukekohe High School (Maia Brear, Jing Zhao Chua, Grace Huang, Keira Richards)

University of Waikato

Madushani Dissanayaka (a PhD student in Ben Dickson's group) recently competed in the University of Waikato Doctoral Three Minute Thesis competition. Madushani was ranked in the top 10 (of 27 presenters) in the heats and followed up with a stellar performance in the final with her talk titled, "Development of bacterial DNA ligase inhibitors against Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacterial infection". While she didn't take home the trophy, she certainly made the chemistry team proud!

Soham Chaundari has started his MSc project with Tam Stringer on novel ruthenium complexes for anticancer applications.

Our team hosted a series of spectroscopy visits for Year 13 secondary school students, where students learned more about NMR and IR spectroscopy and GCMS. Schools participating included Hillcrest High School, Paeroa College, Matamata College and Taupo.

Hill Labs

It is with great sadness that we share the news of Ian Graves' passing, as the result of an accident while surfing at his beloved Whale Bay, Raglan. An obituary has been published separately in this update of Chemistry in New Zealand. Ian will be deeply missed by the Hill Labs whānau. Our thoughts are with Ian's wife, Andrea, and children, Jack and Anna.