Congratulations to Amir Sohail who defended his thesis May 20.  Amir’s work was entitled “Electronic Structure and Charge-Transfer Dynamics in Donor–Acceptor Dyes and Heteroleptic Metal Complexes”.

Congratulations to Jeremy and Keith on their latest publication in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand.  The citaiton is: Huang, Z.; Xue, B.; Zhang, M.; Rooney, J. S.; Gordon, K. C.; Killeen, D. P. Symbolically Regressing Fish Biomass Spectral Data: A Linear Genetic Programming Method With Tunable Primitives. Journal of the Royal […]

Congratulations to Peter who just published a wonderful review on low frequency Raman in ACS Optical Materials. The full citation is: Remoto, P. J. G.; Gordon, K. C. Low-Frequency Raman Spectroscopy: Opportunities in Solid-State Modeling and Analysis. ACS Applied Optical Materials 2026, 4 (4), 1000–1029. The work reviews the enormous growth in the use of […]

Congratulations to Jervee for submitting her thesis entitled “Using vibrational spectroscopy to investigate the molecular properties of plant-based food systems”. Her thesis examined the effects of pulse electric field treatments on plant-based proteins. This included protein meal through to semi-processed food stuffs. Thus far she has published six papers and has won and has won […]

The KCG group had their group meetings in Wellington and Dunedin this afternoon.  Khansa, Saniga, Anam and Sana met in the Wellington cable car during the MacDiarmid meeting and Peter, Lisa, MJ, Skyler and Keith enjoyed a great talk in Dunedin.

A new publication in Joule (impact factor = 35.4) highlights the use of asymmetric separators to control ion nucleation in sodium ion batteries.  This can greatly increase performance.  This is part of a collaboration between Keith Gordon and Professor Guiyin Xu (Donghua University).  Citation: Asymmetric bulk toward energy-dense fast-charging sodium metal batteries, T. Zhang, X. Li, […]

The MacDiarmid Institute recently ran their MI Research Programme meetings and CRISP in Wellington, 9-10 April 2026.  A lot of group members went to it and contributed as part of the MESA group

Peter just had a book chapter published with the Royal Society of Chemistry.  The Chapter entitled “The Use of Emission and Resonance Raman Spectroscopy to Examine Structural Changes upon Photoexcitation in Metal Complexes”  is part of Photofunctional Materials: Photoactive Coordination Complexes (part of the Inorganic Materials Series) edited by Paul A Scattergood.  The chapter lays out […]

From March 18–21, 2026, Jervee and members of the OPTICA Otago Student Chapter took part in ASB Polyfest 2026 in Auckland as part of the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies community engagement program. The team ran fun, hands-on light experiments to show the community how things like reflection, diffraction, and color work. It was all about making […]

Mitchell Chalmers has submitted his PhD thesis for examination.  His thesis entitled “Raman Spectroscopy for Biomedical Applications” focuses on the use of Raman spectroscopy to investigate mineral growths in human tissue; such as those associated with breast cancer.  His work has already been published in the following papers: Chalmers, M.; Gordon, Keith C.; McCane, B.; Fraser-Miller, […]