CMESA (Chemical & Materials Engineering Students’ Association) recently held its Annual General Meeting. The incumbent Matthew Oei (on the far right of the picture) was voted to remain as President for 2021. The other nominees, who all competed strongly and demonstrated a high level of passion to serve, will be appointed into the new Committee…

We were lucky to have an in-person graduation ceremony on the 4th of November, held at the Spark Arena. Feedback from students and family was that they were highly appreciative of the university organising this event during this tricky year of lockdowns and high alerts. Best wishes to all our graduates and we hope you…

At our recent Chemmat Industry Advisory Board meeting, one of the items discussed was the idea of exploring the possibility of having some Part IV projects done collaboratively with our industry friends. Our board members were keen to explore how industry folk could co-design 4th year research projects with academic staff and also co-supervise. We…

It was a real pleasure to host the Chemmat class of ’85 on 16 October when we gave them a lab tour of our new facilities. We were truly impressed by how this group has been able to stay in touch and motivated to meet up after all these years. Such an alumni spirit that…

October message   In these troubled times the challenges the world faces require, more than ever, the solutions from chemical and materials engineers. Whether it is about discovering novel ways to detect quickly the presence of a virus, developing technology for large scale cleaning and sterilising, or providing clever means to upscale antivirals and food supplies, there is simply no way these can…

IChemE’s Safety Centre Director Trish Kerin discusses key lessons with two former regulators. Dame Judith Hackitt was the Chair of the UK Health and Safety Executive and is also involved in advising Governments in UK and in Australia on reform of Building Safety Regulation. Jane Cutler was the CEO of the National Offshore Petroleum Safety…

In June 2020 it was announced that Chemmat’s Professor Wei Gao had been awarded  The Vice-Chancellor’s Commercialisation Medal as part of the University of Auckland 2020 Research Excellence Awards. From the UoA website: Professor Wei Gao from Chemical and Materials Engineering has been a very active and vocal supporter of the value of industry engagement…

In May 2020, $25M for innovative solutions in response to COVID-19 was announced by the government. $110K was awarded to Chemmat’s Associate Professor Ashton Partridge’s company Digital Sensing Ltd. The name of their project for testing for COVID-19,  is “Mass-production of point-of-care diagnostics for COVID19 and blood based biomarkers – Phase 1: Testing the biology.”…

April 2020   On Monday 30 March 2020, the University began full online teaching to provide some sense of business continuity amidst the nationwide Alert Level 4 lockdown. As staff scrambled to prepare, students were understandably anxious on how the following weeks, and possibly months, would play out for their learning experience. For this to…

An interview with Chemmat alumni James Woolner who is presently living in The Netherlands:   In 2018 I decided to do what every Kiwi seems to do in their career, move to Europe. Being a UK national and therefore having EU citizenship, I thought it would be more of a challenge to move into Europe…