Welcome BBQ for chemistry students 

In March the NZIC Wellington Branch held a student welcome BBQ. Undergraduate and postgraduate chemistry students and staff attended the event. The sun came to the party and made for a very pleasant time to hang out and chat, enjoying BBQ food and the ever-popular liquid nitrogen ice cream!

Tales of industry and regulation

In April Shaun Presow from the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) in New Zealand gave a presentation to the Wellington NZIC branch. Shaun is the Hazardous Substances Reassessments Manager for EPA, responsible for the group that reviews substances approved for use in New Zealand. He has extensive experience in regulatory affairs, and prior to the NZ EPA held regulatory roles in BASF SE in Germany and the European Chemical Industry Council in Belgium. He holds a PhD in chemistry from Ruhr-University, Germany. In his engaging talk titled, “Tales of Industry and Regulation” he spoke about chemical regulation and how chemical use must be balanced against impact to people and the environment. 

PhD completions

Congratulations to Rory Lehane (supervisors: Lawrence Harris and Andreas Luxenburger at the Ferrier Research Institute) who defended his thesis, "Novel imino-C-nucleoside antivirals" in March. The thesis was well received and nominated for the Dean's list. Rory has gone on to a radiopharmaceutical scientist role at AdvanCell in Brisbane.

Congratulations also to Natasha Nipper (supervisors: Emily Parker and Rosannah Cameron at the Ferrier Research Institute) who successfully defended her thesis in May entitled, "Investigating transcriptional regulation to enhance natural product biosynthesis in Penicillium paxillin".