Proud supervisor moment with Dr Tait Francis receiving his PhD award at the University of Otago May ceremony. We wish Tait the best as he surveys postdoc options. Congrats again Tait!

Well done Larissa who recently defended (remotely from Europe at that) her thesis titled “Pyridine-containing ices and their potential role in Titan’s chemical evolution”. On the recommendation of all three examiners, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Sciences has placed Larissa’s thesis on the Divisional List of Exceptional Doctoral theses. The List comprises those Doctoral candidates whose research is assessed by examiners as being of an exceptional standard in every respect – research content, originality, quality of expression, and accuracy of presentation – and is amongst the top 10% of theses examined. Awesome stuff Larissa!

In quick succession, we celebrate Tait Francis who submitted his thesis entitled “The Co-crystal Toolbox: Molecular Symmetry Analysis for Identification and Characterisation” last week. Tait is sticking around on a Otago writing bursary to complete papers on his research and await his oral defense at the end of the year. However, safe to say some rest and relaxation takes priority at this point. Congrats Tait!

Biggest congratulations to Ennis PhD candidate Larissa, who submitted her thesis titled “Pyridine-containing ices and their potential role in Titan’s chemical evolution” for examination last Thursday. Here she is ringing the bell as Otago tradition. Sadly, Larissa will be soon departing New Zealand for Europe to write papers and pursue postdoc opportunities, while she awaits her oral defense later in the year. Best wishes Larissa and a massive thank you for your sensational work tracking down new co-crystals for the Marsden project. Kia haumaru te haere!

Just appearing online is Larissa’s exciting work performing the first laboratory photolysis of a planetary cocrystal. Targeting the pyridine:acetylene system, through FTIR and mass spec we show that the morphology and temperature of mixed ices impact on the product distribution. Follow the link to check out the PCCP article:

Lopes Cavalcante et al. PCCP 2024 DOI:10.1039/D4CP03437F

It was our absolute pleasure to welcome Dr Vandi Verma, chief engineer for Mars rover missions at NASA JPL, to stop by the Ennis lab during her Dunedin visit and discuss future Solar System exploration and the growing contributions of New Zealand researchers in support of these missions. Evidently Naila had an exciting day discussing recent Mars discoveries as a detour from recent interstellar dust surface chemistry.

Check out Ennis & Garden group MSc graduate Lily Clague’s impressive work on the bottom-up formation of benzene from acetylene on olivine mineral surfaces; featured on the cover of ACS Earth & Space Chemistry. The spectroscopy wasn’t quite at the stage to make the article although we are currently making headway into experimental validation of her theoretical work.

Clague et al. (2024) ACS Earth Space Chem. 2024, 8, 5, 945–956

Awesome, awesome news with Ennis group PhD Tait Francis receiving one of only six New Zealand Space Agency/NASA scholarships to intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories for 3 months starting June. Here is Tait receiving this prestigious award from the Minister of Space at a ceremony at Parliament. We look forward to hearing updates from Tait as he contributes to experimental research on complex organic molecules in Titan’s atmosphere. Read more about the opportunity here:

MBIE New Zealand Space Agency NASA Internships 2024

Welcome to MSc students Jacob and Jake, who will be working on silicate grain surface reactions and host-guest interactions in MOFs respectively. Also welcome to Rebecca who will be unleashing the group’s new electron source on Titan relevant ices working with postdoc Naila.

Finally, a big thanks to friend of the group Helen Maynard-Casely who had a week at Otago to finish up some co-crystal structure refinement with Larissa and Tait. A fun and productive visit!

Big things in 2024!

This August Larissa has been super busy “across the ditch” performing Titan cocrystal XRD experiments with collaborators Sam Duyker and the Kennedy group at USyd before heading down to Melbourne to mix with the world’s crystallographers at IUCr2023. Here she is in front of her awesome poster with co-supervisor Helen Maynard-Casely. Sounds like an idea filled supervisor debrief to come from Larissa’s extensive networking!!