The throw-away culture is generating a lot of waste every year, for example, in the shoes/fashion industry. Ivan contributed to a news story for the TVNZ Seven Sharp programme. You can watch the report by following the link here.
Congratulations to Ram for successfully passing his PhD oral examination with minor corrections!
Ram’s PhD consisted of two parts. The first part was on the green chemical synthesis of nitrogen-containing heterocycles from itaconic acid as a renewable source. This was done with his main supervisor A/Prof. Jon Sperry. The second part of his PhD was on the structural and biochemical studies of Mycobacterium tuberculosis enzyme isocitrate lyase. This work was conducted in collaboration with Dr Ghader Bashiri. To date, Ram got three papers as first author from his PhD work, with one more manuscript currently under submission.
Ram has been working as a postdoc in the group of A/Prof. Martin Stone at Monash University since he left Auckland – and he is making good progress in his new project(s) and learning new skills over in Australia. Ram’s PhD is well deserved and we all would like to take this opportunity to wish him very best of luck for his future in academia!
Check out our new book chapter on β-lactoglobulin – with Professor Leiwen Xiang, who visited us two years ago from Fujian, and Professor Laurie Melton.
Congratulations to Aimee and Mike! Their review article on MCR-1, a phosphoethanolamine transferase that causes polymyxin resistance, was published on the journal Drug Discovery Today (impact factor: 6.848). This comprehensive review covers the structure, function and mechanism and MCR-1. This project was conducted in collaboration with Associate Professor Chris Squire.
You can read the review by following the link below:
Ivan visited the University of Oxford (Professors Chris Schofield and Tim Claridge), the University of Leicester (Dr Richard Hopkinson) and the University of Lincoln (Dr Tobias Gruber) in the UK this week. He gave talks on Ram’s PhD work on Mycobacterium tuberculosis isocitrate lyase.
Tom Tower, Christ Church College, University of Oxford. Apparently the ClockTower at the University of Auckland was designed based on the Tom Tower.Radcliffe Camera of the University of OxfordInside the NMR laboratory of the Leicester Institute of Structural and Chemical BiologyVisiting the laboratory of Dr Gruber at the University of Lincoln
Ivan attended the 43rd FEBS Congress, which was held in Prague between the 7th and 12th of July. The conference, which was themed ‘Biochemistry Forever’ was attended by around 2,000 delegates from across the world and there were many interesting talks and posters. It was also nice to catch up with colleagues and friends from the scientific community during the conference!
The city of PragueThe city of PragueThe city of PragueThe city of PragueIvan gave a poster presentation on Ram’s PhD work
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment released a letter yesterday to urge the Government to clear up the confusion around environmentally friendly plastics. Ivan gave his comment about what steps consumers and retailers can take when recycling these different types of plastics.
Ivan visited the laboratory of Dr Alexander Wolf at Helmholtz Zentrum München in Germany. Dr Wolf hosted Oi Wei earlier this year for a cell biology project on Batten Disease. Hopefully we will be able to collect enough data for a joint publication soon!
Congratulations to Mike, whose collaboration work with Distinguish Professor Margaret Brimble’s group was published in Organic Biomolecular Chemistry. This work was led by Shengping Zhang, a PhD student in the Brimble Group.
You can read the publication by following the link below: