Professional careers lecture

In September, the NZIC Wellington Branch ran a professional careers lecture aimed at undergraduate and post-graduate students. At this evening, 5 guest speakers were invited to come and share where their chemistry degrees have taken them and what they have learnt along the way. The guest speakers were Dr Janice Cheng from Hot Line Labs, Dr Emily Mason from Welllington UniVentures, Dr Robert Whitney from IRANZ, Dr Joanna Dowle from the Environmental Protection Authority and Dr Amy Lynch from Med Safe. Students found the evening encouraging and were surprised by the range of career options available.

Travel grants

This year the NZIC Wellington Branch awarded travel grants to Dan Torres and Lauren Taylor.

Dan Torres, a PhD student at the Ferrier Research Institute, presented a poster of his research at the EFMC International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry in Rome, September 2024. The trip was partially funded by the NZIC travel grant. His poster describes the synthesis of a modified nucleoside phosphoramidite for applications in RNA synthesis. At this conference, Dan was able to meet other scientists whose research is in a similar area to exchange tips and tricks, as well as discuss possible collaborative work.

‍‍Lauren Taylor, a PhD student at Victoria University of Wellington, used the funding to attend the 4th Synthetic Biology of Natural Products Conference, Cancun, May 2024. Here is her report: 

With support from the NZIC, I’m very grateful to have attended the 4th Synthetic Biology of Natural Products Conference, held in Cancun in May. It brought together experts from around the world to discuss advancements in synthetic biology with a heavy focus on its application to natural product drug discovery.

Several speakers delivered inspirational talks that underscored the cutting-edge research in synthetic biology. Notably, Rebecca Goss from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, renowned for her work in bioorganic chemistry, exhibited her work on gene cluster insertion of aryl halide handles for selective chemical functionalisation. N. Cecelia Martinez-Gomez from Berkeley University, California, shared groundbreaking work she’s doing for the U.S Department of Defence. Her team are selectively rare earth element mining from electronic waste to recover lanthanides using bacteria. And Serina Robinson from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science & Technology discussed her role in the construction of the Ocean Microbiome Database to emphasise the potential of drug discovery from marine genome mining.

I had the privilege to present a poster titled, "A structure-activity relationship investigation of new genome-mined halogenated peptides." The poster sessions provided an excellent platform to showcase my research and engage in discussions with fellow researchers. The feedback I received was very constructive, with valuable insights for future research for my thesis. However, I was most invigorated by the opportunity to network. It opened my eyes to the vast potential of overseas job opportunities I could undertake once I finish my PhD.

I would like to thank the NZIC for the funding they provided to enable me to have this amazing experience.

‍Ferrier Institute

PhD completions

Congratulations to Lucy Hughes and Taylor Hibbard, who successfully defended their PhD theses in September and October 2024 respectively.

Prizes

Congratulations to David Hsu who won the student talk prize at the Australasian Glycosciences Symposium hosted in Wellington in August 2024.

‍‍Congratulations to Dr Alistair Richardson for winning first prize in the Early Career Researcher talks at the Synthetic Biology Satellite Conference during the Queenstown Molecular Biology Meeting (QMB 2024). Congratulations also to PhD student Lani Campbell, who was awarded third prize for her talk.

Funding successes

Two MBIE Smart Ideas proposals from the Ferrier Institute were awarded funding. 

Congratulations to Peter Tyler for leading the successful proposal titled, “Bypassing resistance mechanisms in breast and ovarian cancers”. This work will develop drugs targeting DNPH1 in order to re-sensitise drug-resistant breast and ovarian cancers to therapies. 

Congratulations also to Andreas Luxenburger for leading the successful proposal titled, “A safer drug for heart failure”. This work will explore new mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs) with improved selectivity profiles - offering protection for the heart without the undesired renal toxicity that existing MRAs suffer from.

Outreach

It has been a busy few months for outreach and engagement by Ferrier Institute staff, co-ordinated by Amy Foster and Mary Goodwin. The institute hosted senior college students visiting with the Moko Foundation in August 2024, and students from the Tauhara North No. 2 Trust in October 2024. Both groups carried out a a bark extraction experiment as an example of the natural products isolation work that is done at the Institute. Institute members also ran hands on chemistry demonstrations for Year 9 and 10 students from the Hutt Valley schools at the World of Tech Expo in November 2024. Recently, chemistry and biology teachers from around NZ were hosted at the Gracefield campus for an NMR workship as part of Chem/Ed BioLive.