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Gordon Group News (Mid 2018)

Keith accepting an award, from Prof. Richard Blaikie, for being a science division finalist for ‘Supervisor of the Year’ 2018.

Keith Gordon was recently a finalist for the Otago University Science Division Supervisor of the Year award. He was nominated for his dedication to the growth of his students, both scientifically and personally. Keith gave an invited talk on “Insight into organic photovoltaic materials through Raman spectroscopy and computational chemistry” at ICORS 2018 (International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy) in Jeju, Korea.

Jonathan on graduation day in front of the Otago clock tower.

Jonathan Barnsley graduated with a PhD in August for his work with the “Spectroscopy of Donor-Acceptor Dyes”. Jonathan is currently working as a research associate and is planning for a short Postdoc position on the photochemistry of hops in collaboration with Plant and Food Research. The recent publication “Frequency dispersion reveals chromophore diversity and colour-tuning mechanism in parrot feathers” in Royal Society Open Science gathered widespread attention as was featured by TV3 news, The Scientist, Forbes and ABC Australia.

Georgina Shillito presented a poster at the “Electron Donor-Acceptor” GRS conference in Newport, RI, USA. While overseas, Georgina visited Julia Weinstein’s lab in Sheffield. She has also published the paper: “Dramatic Alteration of 3ILCT Lifetimes Using Ancillary Ligands in [Re(L)(CO)3(phen-TPA)]n+ Complexes: An Integrated Spectroscopic and Theoretical Study” in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Joshua Sutton presented a poster at ICORS 2018 entitled “Raman Spectroscopy from Low Frequency to Overtones – Insight into the Electronic Structure of Self-assembling Materials”. Joshua will also visit the Mike George lab in Nottingham, UK, to make some time-resolved IR measurements and visit Han Young Woo’s group at Korea University Seoul. Joshua received funding from Claude McCarthy Fellowship to assist in this travel. He published a number of papers this year including: “A Nona‐nuclear Heterometallic Pd3Pt6 “Donut”‐Shaped Cage: Molecular Recognition and Photocatalysis” in Angewandte Chemie.

Jeremy Rooney is currently writing up his PhD thesis entitled “Low Temperature Cured Waterborne Coil Coatings” and recently gave a presentation to NZ Steel and Callaghan Innovation in Auckland. Jeremy and Matt Tarling have published a paper titled “Distinguishing the Raman spectrum of polygonal serpentine”.

Joseph Mapley presented a poster at ICORS 2018 entitled “Electronics of β-Indandione Modified Zinc Porphyrins” and also published a number of papers including: “Computational and Spectroscopic Analysis of β-Indandione Modified Zinc Porphyrins” in Journal of Physical Chemistry A.

Keith with Ruth and Samanali with their awards from the Dodd Walls Centre symposium.

Ruth Eloisa Sales presented a talk entitled “Vibrational spectroscopy of lake snot: Conquering the New Zealand lakes invader” at the Dodd Walls Centre Symposium for which she won the prize of Best Oral Presentation. Ruth also presented a talk entitled “Vibrational spectroscopy of New Zealand lake snot” at ICORS 2018.

Garagoda Arachchige Piumika Samanali presented a poster entitled “Probing consolidant penetration into Harakeke fibres using Raman microscopy” at the Dodd Walls Centre Symposium for which she won the prize of Best Poster Presentation.

Kārlis Bērziņš from Latvia has joined the Gordon group as a PhD student. Kārlis’s background is in pharmaceutical studies, and he will use Raman spectroscopy and multivariate analysis to probe solid state pharmaceutical systems. We are also joined by Chima Robert from Nigeria as a PhD student. Chima’s background is in forensic chemistry and he will use Raman spectroscopy for a number of different analytical projects.

Elliot Tay has been working on frequency dispersion in the Raman spectra of parrot feathers. This work follows on from the initial study using Raman spectroscopy to probe the nature of pigments in parrot feathers. Elliot plans to carry on research in the Gordon group next year.

Chemistry Outreach in Malaysia which included Sam (back row, third from left).

Undergraduate students Sam McIntyre and Lachlan Gaudin are also in the Gordon labs as part of their CHEM390 studies. Sam is using Raman spectroscopy to investigate quality control of apricots, while Lachlan is using low-frequency Raman spectroscopy to investigate crystallinity within organic photovoltaics. Sam recently got back from a Chemistry Outreach program in Malaysia and Lachlan was part of the winning team “Live and diethylamine” for the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry Quiz night.

The winning team “Live and diethylamine”, including Keith (first left) and Lachlan (forth from left), from the NZIC quiz held in Dunedin in August.

Recently, Bjarke Søgaard Laugesen, from the University of Copenhagen visited the group. He was making low-frequency Raman measurements of solid state pharmaceuticals, with a particular interest in polymorphic changes and drug stability.

Wanghyo Kim is a visiting student from UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology), Ulsan, South Korea. Wanghyo has a background in organic synthesis of photosensitive dyes for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). He is visiting to make some resonance Raman spectroscopy measurements with his supervisor, Professor Tae-Hyuk Kwon who is on sabbatical. Professor Makoto Yamaguci (Akita University) also on sabbatical with the Gordon group. Makoto is an expert in aeroplastics and will be investigating low-frequency Raman as a novel way to measure crystallinity in these systems.