IUPAC Global Women’s Breakfast
The Wellington branch enjoyed joining in the IUPAC global Women’s breakfast. There were two sites at which people could join, one at Victoria University of Wellington Kelburn campus, and the other at the Ferrier institute at Gracefield, Lower Hutt. The two groups connected online.
Ferrier Research Institute
PhD completion
Congratulations to Dan Torres, who successfully defended his PhD thesis titled, “Synthesis of nucleoside analogues and elucidation of their antiviral mechanisms”. Since joining the Ferrier Research Institute in 2018, Dan has also completed a summer studentship, a Master of Drug Discovery and Development (MDDD) thesis and two research assistant roles within the Institute, publishing in high impact journals along the way. The Institute wishes Dan success as he embarks on a career in clinical research.
Obituary - Dr Ian Miller FNZIC
It is with sadness we record the passing of Wellington Branch member Dr Ian Miller on 13 January 2025, aged 82 years. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry United Kingdom and a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute Chemistry.
Ian grew up in the small South Island towns of Hokitika and Rakaia, learning practical and sporting skills, especially cricket, then went to Ashburton High for secondary school from which he graduated as Dux and gained 1st place in New Zealand in the scholarship chemistry exam. He received a BSc(Hons) and PhD from the University of Canterbury, then undertook postdoctoral studies at the University of Calgary in Canada. He then worked at Chemistry Division DSIR to 1986 when he set up Carina Chemical Laboratories Ltd, developing new chemical and fuel technologies from algae or biomass.
Specific recent inventions include the making of fuels and chemicals from microalgae and specialised marine gels from a red seaweed that are the basis of the Nemidon range of Health and Wellness products.
Dr Miller won the Shell Prize for Industrial Chemistry in 1988. He authored 100 peer reviewed scientific papers - a significant body of work across diverse areas of seaweed-derived natural products and applied organic chemistry, as well as applied photochemistry and free radical chemistry - and scientific ebooks on chemical theory, planetary formation, and an alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics. He also wrote several science fiction eBooks and composed classical music.
(Co-written by Professor Richard Furneaux and Dr Rob Whitney and approved by Ian’s daughter, Helen Miller).
