This year, Julie and Amy presented posters at the IONS-KOALA conference in Dunedin (pictured below). Cather also attended the conference as a Plenary Speaker with her talk ‘Chemical Physics and Widgets’.
IONS-KOALA 2010
Year: 2010
APC NZ 2010
The Photon Factory had a high profile at this year’s Asian Photochemistry Conference in Wellington this November. Julie gave her first presentation at an international conference, while both Amy Lin and Sarah Thompson had posters. Cather was a keynote speaker, with her talk ‘A New Twist in the Tale: Ultrafast Dynamics of Diphosphenes and Phosphoalkenes’.
Radio NZ Appearance: 50th Anniversary of the Laser
To celebrate 50 years of lasers, Radio NZ had a laser-centric feature during ‘Our Changing World’ on Thurday, 09 December. Cather was one of the three guests invited to speak along with Kylie Price from the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research and Justin Hodgkiss from Victoria University. The story can be heard here.
Running Hot 2010
Last week, Cather traveled to Wellington for the 3rd Running Hot conference on creating value with research. As part of the conference, she sat on a panel with two other researchers – Christine Jasoni from Otago and Marc Tadaki from Auckland – to discuss the New Zealand environment for new and emerging researchers. The panel discussion was led by Bryan Crump, of RadioNZ Nights fame, and can be heard here.
The research group … almost
A photographer from the Faculty of Science came and took pictures of the lab. We’ll need to photoshop Josh and Fraser in, though. We all enjoy being in the lab … we’re smiling, see?
CHEM 750 taught at UoA and Vic in 2010
This year, Dr. Justin Hodgkiss and Dr. Cather Simpson decided to team forces across the North Island and teach ultrafast spectroscopy via video link. We’ve just finished the 6-lecture block, and (with a few minor glitches) it worked very well! We’ll see what the ~30 students have to say at the end of the semester, but we enjoyed it so much that we’re already planning next year’s class.
Newly Minted Ph.D.
“Congratulations to Dr. John Payton! Cather Simpson traveled back to the US to attend the successful dissertation defense of her last Ph.D. student from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.”
