University of Otago, Department of Chemistry

NZIC Dessertation 2024

Otago held its 2024 ‘Dessertation’ event in April. We had 10 participants in total and three prizes: Most Creative, People’s Choice and Best Cake. The standard of cake decorating was very high and it was hard to choose a winner! Most Creative went to Ben Sutherland who made a DLS instrument cake. People’s Choice went to Jackson Henneveld who decorated their cake with a toxin-producing frog and round-bottom flask. Best Cake went to the person we thought fit the brief really well, Julia Camilli, whose cake depicted bioorthogonal chemistry. 

Tait Francis awarded a 2024 NASA internship

Tait Francis has been awarded one of only six coveted positions to undertake a 3-month internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories, California with the placement funded by the New Zealand Space Agency. Starting in June, Tait will gain access to JPL’s advanced instrumentation to advance on his PhD research toward organic molecules formed in Titan’s aerosols undertaken in the Ennis lab. It is hoped his findings at JPL will provide chemical targets for the Dragonfly mission, the next NASA mission to Saturn’s largest moon. More to come next issue!

‍Gordon Group

Jeremy Rooney visited Plant and Food Research Nelson twice which involved an industry forum and trials in a production pilot plant. This is part of the work Jeremy does with Plant and Food through an MBIE program (Cybermarine). He is presenting at the International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy (ICORS 2024) in Rome later in the year.

Jervee Punzalan presented her work at the Near Infrared meeting in Christchurch - the 20th ANISG/NZNIRSS Conference in Christchurch. Jervee obtained an NZNIRSS Student Award which acknowledges her work in near-infrared spectroscopy research and provides funding towards conference expenses. Jervee gave a flash presentation for her poster at this meeting and was able to catch up with Gordon group alumni, Dr Chima Robert, Dr Cushla McGoverin and Dr Samanali Garagoda Arachchige. Jervee’s submission to ICORS was accepted for oral presentation. There she will be talking about the use of Raman spectroscopy to evaluate protein extraction form plant material using pulsed electric field technology. Jervee was awarded a University of Otago divisional travel grant to support this conference attendance.

Keith Gordon recently attended the 25th anniversary PCCP symposium and editorial board meeting in Amsterdam. The meeting was hosted at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Keith presented a poster on low frequency Raman spectroscopy and chaired one of the sessions.  Keith is also a keynote speaker at the upcoming ICORS 2024 conference.

Congratulations to Peter Remoto and Sam Harris on their respective abstracts for ICORS 2024 being accepted for oral presentations.

We also welcome Sam McCullogh as an Honours student in Forensic Science and Lisa Leung (300-level project) to the group. Sam is working on water treatment samples with Dr Jono Barnsley at the Dunedin City Council and Lisa is working on microplastics in Lake Wānaka using Raman microscopy, in collaboration with Marine Science at Otago.