Chemmat at Enginuity Day

  Enginuity day is an annual event organised by the Women in Engineering, University of Auckland to inspire young women to consider careers in engineering and to discover what it is like to study engineering at the University of Auckland. This year, the event was held on 4-5 July at City campus and we had…

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NZ health care has a climate change problem

  The health care sector may be as bad as the aviation industry when it comes to greenhouse gases and pollution. The anaesthetic gases released every year by one New Zealand hospital have the carbon footprint of 500 return flights between New Zealand and London, University of Auckland researchers have estimated. One hour’s use of…

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Science: Cold pasteurisation works

  What happens when high pressure is applied to food and drink? If a domestic pressure cooker is used, the result might be a classic pot roast or a trendy smokey beef brisket. Both are good eating and achieved with about two atmospheric pressure, or roughly the pressure experienced by a human 10.3 metres below…

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A clean solution for gases

Photo: Chemmat’s Dr Saeid Baroutian   Researchers at the University of Auckland have estimated that the anaesthetic gases released by one hospital annually in New Zealand have the carbon footprint of 500 return plane journeys between New Zealand and London. The good news is that the same researchers have developed a way to capture those…

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Making food safe using pressure instead of heat

Photo: Chemmat’s Professor Mohammed Farid   Professor Farid often depicts the pressure exerted in high pressure processing visually, as two elephants standing on a coin. The Ministry for Primary Industries recently approved the use of high pressure processing (HPP) as a process that kills the bacterial pathogens that are known to cause problems in New…

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Celebrating the career of Professor John Chen

On 15 July 2019, staff members and friends came together to celebrate the career of Professor John Chen, and wish him all the best for his retirement years commencing 1 Aug 2019. Current Head of Department Associate Professor Ashvin Thambyah welcomed guests and gave a brief overview of John’s career: John was with New Zealand…

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Chemmat – well presented at Cambridge

In May we had a visit from Chemmat graduate Reece Oosterbeek, who is in the midst of an exciting PhD program at Cambridge University. Reece received a prestigious Woolf Fisher scholarship to undertake doctoral studies at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge. Joining his soon is another Chemmat graduate, Rakesh Arul,…

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A great outcome from MIT

Congratulations to Dr Geran Zhang – Chemmat grad who completed a PhD at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Geran visited the department in May with the good news that he has not only completed his PhD at MIT, where he was on a full scholarship awarded by MIT, but also that he was embarking…

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Chemmat Mixer 2019 – Shadows

Each year the department ‘facilitates’ a mixer, organised by the Year Three students, that brings both staff and students of the department for an evening of casual mixing. The aim of this annual event is to foster a sense of collegiality and camaraderie amongst all members of the department, and that means both staff and…

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Urbanaut Brewery Tour

By Thomas Chong, CHEMMAT student On the 10/5/2019, the groovy crew of CMESA visited the Urbanauts Brewery for a day of “educational” sampling and exposure to what a chemical and materials engineering degree can offer. After the overwhelmingly positive response from the same tour conducted last year, the CMESA committee brought back the Urbanauts Brewery…

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