Gordon Group News (August 2020)

Joe Mapley’s paper on “Investigation of Ferrocene Linkers in β-substituted Porphyrins” was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A. Kārlis Bērziņš and Sara Miller published a paper on “Co-Amorphization of Kanamycin with Amino Acids Improves Aerosolization” in collaboration with researchers from the School of Pharmacy, University of Otago. Sara Miller and Sam McIntyre published Sam’s summer studentship work with the KCG group in a paper, “Vibrational spectroscopy and chemometrics for quantifying key bioactive components of various plum cultivars grown in New Zealand”, in the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy.

Joshua Sutton successfully defended his PhD “Donor-Acceptor systems: A study using vibrational and electronic spectroscopies and computational modelling” in the middle of July and is working on finishing a few papers. Elliot Tay submitted his Masters thesis “Investigating the Vibrational and Electronic States of Various π-Conjugated Systems” and will be furthering his education by undertaking a PhD in Bochum, Germany.

Carla Meledandri (examiner), Joshua Sutton, Keith Gordon (supervisor), and Lyall Hanton (convenor) after Joshua’s PhD defence.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, KCG group members have been busy presenting and participating in different virtual conferences and workshops. Chima Robert and Kārlis Bērziņš gave talks, titled “Understanding the isothermal dehydration of crystalline hydrates in both the low and mid-frequency Raman regions” and “Solving the computational puzzle: towards a pragmatic pathway for modelling low-energy vibrational modes of pharmaceutical crystals“, respectively, at the annual Pharmaceutical Solid State Research Cluster (PSSRC) Zoom meeting at the end of the June. Chima’s presentation was nominated as one of the 12 best presentations at the meeting. Chima’s work highlighted the polymorphic transformation of some common drugs upon dehydration.

Chima and the Graphical abstract of his talk

The majority of KCG group participated in the International sChool On Nonlinear vibrational Spectro-microscopy (ICONS2020) virtual school, which was organized along the International Conference of Raman Spectroscopy (ICORS2021). That was a nice science exposure on non-linear vibrational spectroscopy and its novel applications, which was conducted by experts in that field.

Sara Miller was nominated as one of 100 Full STE(a)M ahead Women in South, New Zealand, organised by Otago museum. Fatema Ahmmed, Jacob Harrison, Jeremy Rooney, and Samanali Garagoda Arachchige are working on their respective studies. Samantha Jarvis and Peter Remoto joined with KCG group as CHEM390 students, completing projects into organic and inorganic donor acceptor systems, respectively, over the semester break.