Manawatū News
We welcomed Payman Bagheri who commenced a PhD in chemistry with Vyacheslav Filichev.
Congratulations to Brodie Matheson who successfully defended his thesis titled, “Exploring the effects of secondary interactions for magnetic applications” and passed with minor emendations. His supervisors, Mark Waterland, Gareth Rowlands, Tyson Dais, and Paul Plieger are delighted for Brodie and wish him well in the next stages of his career.
Congratulations to Shane Telfer who was awarded the Douglas Pharmaceuticals Prize for Industrial and Applied Chemistry.
Vyacheslav Filichev attended the 6th International Conference on Base Editing, Prime Editing & Related Enzymes – Deaminet 2025 (January 22-24, 2025) in Palm Springs, USA and gave an invited talk on, “DNA-based inhibitors of APOBEC3: mimicking the highest-energy transition state of cytosine deamination”.
Postdoctoral Fellow Harikrishnan M. Kurup gave an invited talk on, “Structure-guided inhibition of the DNA-specific cytosine deaminase APOBEC3A: steps towards preventing evolution of cancer drug resistance” at the Maurice Wilkins Centre 2025 symposium held in Auckland, February 3-5, 2025.
PhD students Mohana Arul, Ghadir Dahalan, Elnaz Jangodaz and Shivangi Chourasia, as well as Shane Telfer and Catherine Whitby from Massey, and Braydon Nikolaison and Sujay Prabakar from NZ LASRA (New Zealand Leather and Shoe Research Association) participated in and gave presentations at the 11th International Conference on Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology in Otautahi Christchurch (9 – 13 February).
We were delighted to welcome Joanne Harvey who visited us on 20 February. Joanne delivered an interesting presentation about the NZIC and her own research. Her visit was also an opportunity for us to belatedly celebrate Vyacheslav Filichev being awarded an NZIC Fellowship.
