University of Auckland

Awards

Congratulations to Associate Professor Lisa Pilkington for receiving the 2024 ACES-NZIC Early Career Award and Professor David Barker for receiving the 2024 NZIC Maurice Wilkins Centre Prize for Chemical Science, which were presented at the School of Chemical Sciences retreat. 

Publications

Congratulations to PhD student Marco Vás and the Söhnel group on their recent success with publishing a paper in the Nature publishing journal, Communications Materials. The paper is titled: “Skyrmion stabilisation and critical behaviour in tellurium-doped Cu₂OSeO₃”. It is the first publication by Marco Vas from his PhD project and shows the interdisciplinary nature of science. The paper is open access and can be read at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43246-025-00804-4. 

‍AUT News

Congratulations

AUT-based start-up Dot Ingredients (formerly Spherelose) has secured $350,000 of investment in a funding round led by Motion Capital, alongside the AUT Innovation Fund and Climate Venture Capital Fund. The investment supports Dot Ingredients' pioneering Celluspheres^TM technology – an innovative surfactant derived sustainably from wood pulp cellulose.

Dot Ingredients was founded based on research from AUT by Associate Professor Jack Chen and Dr Andres Tiban, with substantial backing from the Royal Society Te Apārangi, Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge, MBIE Smart Ideas, KiwiNet and AUT Ventures.