Welcome back Peter
Peter Remoto returns to the group as a PhD student after successfully completing a 6-month internship with DEC Healthcare’s R&D team from 1st May to 1st November. This internship was organised by Dodd-Walls and funded by Callaghan Innovation. Peter’s role was to explore Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) to reliably monitor formulation accuracy during the Hot Melt Extrusion process.
Jervee goes to the 7th International Conference on Food Structures, Digestion, and Health
Jervee Punzalan participated in the 7th International Conference on Food Structures, Digestion, and Health in Queenstown from November 14th to 17th, 2023. She presented her poster on the use of Pulsed Electric Field and Non-Destructive Characterization Analysis with MicroNIR Spectroscopy. With reference to the poster, she also showcased a 90-second video and received recognition as one of the finalists.
New paper in Food Chemistry
Congratulations to Sara and Keith on their publication in Food Chemistry. The work was led by Alaa El-Din A. Bekhit (Food Science, Otago). The study showed that the effect of diet on the structure and composition of rat brains is quite modest, with spectroscopy unable to detect any discernible changes.
Yutong Gao, Alan Carne, Wayne Young, Keegan Burrow, Samer Naji, Sara J. Fraser-Miller, Keith C. Gordon, Alaa El-Din A. Bekhit, “Effect of consumption of sheep and cow milk on rat brain fatty acid and phospholipid composition,” Food Chemistry, Volume 439, 2024, 138056. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.138056
New paper in the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy
Congratulations to Samanali, Sara and Keith on their publication in the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy. This work done in collaboration with Botany (Otago) and Plant and Food was able to show that Raman spectroscopy could measure chill-damaged fruit using calibration from one season to correctly classify a subsequent seasons harvest.
Samanali, G. A. P.,Burritt, D. J., Burdon, J. N., Kerr, C., Fraser‐Miller, S. J.,& Gordon, K. C. (2023). Identification and classification of chill‐damaged versus sound kiwifruit using Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics. Journal of Raman Spectroscopy. https://doi.org/10.1002/jrs.6623
New paper in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research
Working with medics and dentists, Sara Miller, Karlis Berzins and Keith Gordon contributed to a paper on vitamin D and tooth health. The spectroscopy was able to show a very slight changes between healthy and deficient teeth.
- Beckett DM, Vaz Viegas S, Broadbent JM, Wheeler BJ, Bērziņš, K, Fraser-Miller, S.J., Gordon, K.C,Drummond, BK, Mahoney, EK, Loch, C. (2023). An exploration of mineral density, elemental and chemical composition of primary teeth in relation to cord‐blood vitamin D, using laboratory analysis techniques. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. https://doi.org/10.1002/jbmr.4928
Amir and Keith attend AUCAOS
Amir Sohail and Keith Gordon attended the recent AUCAOS (Australasian Community for Advanced Organic Semiconductors) meeting in Tweed Heads NSW, Australia.
Amir presented some of his donor acceptor work in a poster and Keith gave a talk on elongating excited state lifetimes.
Congratulations Sara
Congratulations to Sara Miller for winning an Early Career Awards for Distinction in Research.
Currently a Senior Research Fellow, Dr Miller’s research in vibrational spectroscopy coupled with multivariate analysis has applications to a wide variety of materials and complex systems including pharmaceutics, hard and soft tissues, and primary produce. A more recent focus of research has been in the field of medical diagnostics with particular emphasis on multi-spectroscopic approaches for diagnosis of gastrointestinal illnesses.
Dr Miller has also led two projects funded by Marsden Fast-Start and MBIE Smart Idea grants and is a Principal Investigator in Te Whai Ao – Dodd-Walls Centre of Photonic and Quantum Technologies.
In 2022, she was the inaugural recipient of an Early Career Researcher Award from the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry.
“Thank you to the fantastic people I have worked with at Otago University, Te Whai Ao – Dodd-Walls Centre and abroad for the opportunities and support provided,” Dr Miller says.
Farewell to Dr Sara Miller
Congrats to Sara who is off to Flinders shortly. We all wish her well and anticipate a few collaborative projects ongoing :-).
Group photo after lunch to celebrate Sara’s time at Otago.
Marsden Funding Success: Hydrogen generation with sustainable resources – a combined molecular, computational and engineering approach
Marsden Funding Success
Congratulations to Keith Gordon (PI) and James Crowley (AI) on being awarded $941,000 by the Marsden Fund for their three-year project “Hydrogen generation with sustainable resources – a combined molecular, computational and engineering approach“. Also involved in the project are researchers from Friedrich Schiller University, Jena (Dr S Kupfer, Dr GE Shillito and Prof. W Weigand), Ulm University (Prof. D Ziegenbalg) and the University of Nottingham (Prof. MW George).
Abstract: Hydrogen is an important fuel source and commodity chemical used in a wide range of industrial processes. Unfortunately, almost all the hydrogen produced currently is obtained from the steam reforming process which is both energy intensive and generates carbon dioxide as a by-product. There are already several photocatalytic systems, including bimetallic metal complexes that can efficiently generate hydrogen in this way. However, the current technologies use Noble metals which are expensive and rare. They will use earth abundant transition metals such as iron, cobalt and copper by re-designing the photocatalytic systems.
The grant will fund three PhD stipends and related research costs.
For details of other Marsden Fund Awards to University of Otago PIs, see: Otago researchers secure almost $20m in Marsden Fund grants
Mitchell talks at ICAVS
Mitchell Chalmers recently spoke at International Conference on Advanced Vibrational Spectroscopy (ICAVS12) held in Krakow, Poland, from 27th August – 1st September 2023. His talk was entitled “Discriminating microcalcifications immersed under varying depths of wax” and described work around the detection of materials embedded in wax structures.
