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Past Members of Biomaterials Group...

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Abdenor Fellah

Abdenor obtained a Master of Physical Chemistry qualification from Marne La Vallée University in France before graduating with a Masters Degree with honours in the Chemistry and Physicochemistry of Polymers from Jussieu University (Paris VI – France). There he studied, among other things, techniques of polymers synthesis, mechanical properties of polymers and viscoelasticity. He then turned his hand to biopolymer systems, in particular working on a PhD project involving devloping methodologies for attaching polysaccharides to beads and surfaces. He held a TIF fellowship funded by FRST in collaboration with Fonterra and sacrificed watching his beloved Olympique de Marseille for some quality New Zealand soocer courtesy of the mighty Manawatu Younghearts. In late 2011 he successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Physical and Chemical Attachment of Pectins to Substrates:Methods, Characterization and Application" and is currently planning a move back to France with his wife and three sons.

Rob Ward

Rob has a degree in Mathematics and a masters in Physics, both from Victoria University in Wellington, NZ. He worked in IFS for two years as a research officer and then studyied for a PhD, funded by Magritek, working on the development of portable low-resolution NMR systems and applications in soft-matter research. Rob succesfully defended his PhD in late 2011 writing a thesis entitled "Development and Applications of a Low Field Portable NMR System" and is currently weighing up options for his next move. Rob keeps fit by fell-running and also supplements his income by doing voice-overs for advertisements, specialising in the English accent. Here he is losing the "Last one to the top of Ruapehu is a big girls blouse" competition. Check out his fancy website: http://robward.co.nz/

Erich Schuster

Erich has a Masters in Computational Physics form the University of Vienna, where he worked on efficient computational stategies in order to calculate the Lennard-Jones between extended objects, with a view to modeling liquid-crystal systems. He joined us to take up a PhD Studentship supported by CSIRO, working on approaches to calculate the properties of biopolymer networks. With a keen interest in tramping and climbing he took over the "most likley to die in the mountains" title from Romaric (as well as his car!). Erich successfully defended his thesis entitled "Hierarchical Structure Function Models of Biopolymer Networks" and has taken up a postdctoral position at SIK in Sweden where he is working on modelling diffusion in networks and FRAP measurements. Email: erich.schuster@sik.se

Stephen Keen

Steve joined us on a two year postdoctoral fellowship funded by the MacDiarmid Institute. Steve carried out his PhD studies in the Optical Tweezers group in Glasgow, where he worked on a variety of problems involving hydrodynamic interactions, high speed cameras and microrheology. He did much of the hard work calibrating our Optical Tweezers set-up on worked on developing several super-cool applications with including single molecule stretching and microrheological measurements. His other interests include tramping, skiing, and playing the woodblocks & guitar for an Abba tribute band. Since March 2011 he has taken up a place on a Teachers training course, but is still based and Palmy and coming in to help out with the tweezers work when he needs some excitement!! He has since accepted a position as a physics teacher in a college in Auckland.

Aurélie Cucheval

Aurélie graduated in engineering studies from ENSBANA, a top French food engineering school belonging to the chapter of french Grandes Ecoles in Dijon. She has extensive practical experience working with biopolymers, in particular producing gel beads via an emulsion route for use in encapsulation. She obtained her PhD focussing on structure-function understanding in pectin-milk systems, funded by a FRST TIF fellowship in collaboration with Fonterra, entitled "Investigation of the behaviour of pectin in casein micelle systems and their analogues". She now has a full-time research position in Fonterra and is also continuing to research tramping, night-time bush navigation, beachcombing, goldfish management, factor 100 suncreens...oh and milk. Email: Aurelie.Cucheval@fontera.com

Van Cam Hoang

Van came to NZ from Vietnam where she received a Bachelors Degree in Biology from Hanoi University of Science. She obtained her PhD entitled "Effect of Parasitism on Gastric Mucins in Sheep " with Professor Heather Simpson in IVABS. She utilisised and further developed the range of analytical mono, oligo and poly-saccharide analysis available in the Biomaterials group, in particular to target a better understanding of mucin structure and biological function. She has now moved to Canada with her husband.

Naser Belmiloud

Naser undertook his PhD working on the use of actuated microcantilevers for the measurement of fluid properties at the IMS Laboratory, at the University of Bordeaux, France, where his research interests were in microrheology and MEMS technology. He also has a Masters degree in laser, materials and nanoscience engineering and has moved to NZ for a one year postdoctoral fellowship, supported by the Marsden fund, working on extending our polymer stretching work, by developing an improved automated methodology with the AFM. He made great strides in a limited time leaving the group with a laptop based AFM control system and analysis software. He has now moved back to Europe and has a position at IMEC in Leuven, Belgium where he is working on understanding drying at wetting at the nanoscale. Email: nasser.belmiloud@gmail.com

Padmesh Anjukandi

Padmesh has a chemistry degree from Kannur University in India and an MSc in Physical Chemistry. He successfully carried out a six-month project working in the area of Statistical Mechanics of Polymers, in the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and moved to New Zealand to take up a PhD Studentship in our group, supported by the Marsden Fund. Padmesh worked on calculating and simulating the mechanical behaviour of single biopolymer chains, using a variety of tools from DFT calculations on oligomers to Brownian Dynamics Simulations on larger chains. He submitted his thesis entitled "Computational Approaches to the Calculation of Spectroscopic, Structural and Mechanical Properties of Polysaccharide Chains" and has now moved to Germany to take up a postdoctoral position in the Theretical Chemistry Group at Bochum in Gemany. Email: padmesh.anjukandi@theochem.ruhr-uni-bochum.de

Medhat Al-Ghobashy

Medhat originates from Eygpt and came to NZ to study for his PhD with Associate Professor Dave Harding. He worked with the biophysics group developing Capillary Electrophoresis methodologies for the study of biopolymers, in particular proteins; and was the group expert in separation techniques. He completed his PhD, entitled "Downstream Purification and Analysis of the Recombinant Human Myelin Basic Protein Produced in the Milk of Transgenic Cows" and has now returned to Cairo to a position in the Analytical Chemistry, where he is, among other things continuing to pursue his interest in CE. Email: Medhat.alghobashy@cu.edu.eg

Romaric Vincent

Romaric is a materials scientist by training, hailing from St-Etienne in France. He has a Bachelor's degree in Engineering and a Masters of Mechanics from ENSMA Poitiers (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et d'Aérotechnique). He carried out his PhD work in the group on a project focussed on developing microrheological methodologies for studying the soft materials, writing a thesis entitled "Microrheological Investigations of Biopolymer Networks". He was funded by The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology and also found time, in between becoming obsessed with pectin and the pollen tube (!), to enjoy soft materials of the snowy kind. Romaric then undertook a postdoc in the Soft Condensed Matter Physics Group in Fribourg, where he published his Hot Article on Peanut Butter Metallurgy. He has now taken up a second postdoc position in Barcelona where he is looking at cells as colloidal glasses Email: romaric.vincent@gmail.com and check him out on his dodgy blog http://frenchiiiiie.blogspot.com/

Motoko Kakubayashi

Motoko Kakubayashi studied physics at Massey for three years before embarking on a Masters programme in our group. She worked on rheo-NMR with Dr Pat Edwards, Robin Dykstra and Magritek. We were interested in using NMR as a probe of molecular behaviour in soft-matter systems while they were exposed to controlled shear conditions. Motoko obtained some interesting results that we published in Biophysical Journal, developing a cool method for following the enzymatic processing of pectin by NMR. Her Masters Thesis was entitled "Rheo-NMR Studies of Macromolecules". She then moved down to Wellington to purse a career in science journalism, and now has a position at the Science Media Centre in Tokoyo. Check out some of her stories!! http://sciblogs.co.nz/kagaku/tag/technology/ Email: m.kakubayashi@gmail.com

Aaron Marshall

Aaron is a native Kiwi and took his first degree and masters in Engineering at Massey, specialising in electrochemistry. Subsequently he graduated with a PhD from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. He has wide interests in materials technology, particularly understanding surface reactions and processes at the atomic level and has a wide range of skills in materials characterisation methods. He has previously developed novel AFM based techniques and spent a successful year working with us on single polysaccharide molecule stretching. Aaron subsequently won a prestigous New Zealand Postdoctoral Fellowship and, failing a successful audition with Audioslave, worked on catalysts for hydrogen production from water. He has now taken up a position down at the University of Canturbury. Email: aaron.marshall@canterbury.ac.nz

Jonathan Hunt

Jonathan Hunt studied physics at Massey and after three years extended his stay in our group in order to continue working on the computer simulations of polysaccharide fine structure, that he began over the summer, for his Honours project. His Honours report was entitled "Polysaccharide sequence reconstruction from digest patterns" Extensively fuelled by peanut butter Jonny obtained a first class honours in Physics, and his Honours project work on simulating the action of polysaccharide degrading enzymes was published in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta. Jonny was lured away to the bright lights of Queensland to undertake a PhD in modelling studies of the visual cortex, but occasionally comes back to sit in a hammock, survey the NZ sky and try to disprove Bill's latest idea! Jonnys Page Email: jjh@42quarks.com ,