Top young Victoria scientists recognised
victoria-university-of-wellington
Fri Jun 22 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Top young Victoria scientists recognised
Friday, 22 June 2007, 3:20 pm
Press Release: Victoria University of Wellington
22 June 2007
Top young Victoria scientists recognised in major awards
Two up and coming Victoria PhD students have been recognised at the prestigious MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year Awards held in Auckland recently.
Conrad Lendrum and Simon Rogers were named runners-up in the Understanding Planet Earth and the Future Science and Technologies categories respectively. Both are PhD students in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences and each received $2500.
Mr Lendrum's research into bio-mineralisation, the process by which nature produces hard and complex materials such as bones, shells and teeth, offers huge potential to the New Zealand economy.
The process is so far unrivalled in artificial or synthetic technologies, and to find out exactly how nature does it, Mr Lendrum is studying model systems based on the sea urchin, or kina, and coccoliths – protective plates grown by algae.
His research shows that the cell membrane could play an important role in the formation of hard mineral crystalline structures and that by changing the membrane chemistry the crystal structure could also be changed.
“Ultimately we can use this knowledge to understand exactly how our bodies form bone,” he says, “but beyond that it also offers potential for a paradigm shift enabling the creation of complex structures similar to those found in nature for use in industry and manufacturing.”
The research of Victoria's second successful student Simon Rogers was described by the MacDiarmid judges as a cutting edge study that has thrown into question the accepted definitions of solid and liquid states by showing that a star polymer system can be both states simultaneously.
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He has developed a scientific theory to explain the "astounding experimental data" he has recorded and used it to make testable predictions.
His research examines the way a star polymer system suspended in solvents responds to strains and stresses. The ‘stars’ are provided by scientific collaborators in Greece and resemble tiny koosh balls. When constant shear stress is applied to the stars, the sample behaves as a liquid for about two hours before rapidly stiffening into a solid.
“It is a weird phenomenon to have something which can be at the same time solid and liquid. It changes scientific thinking by showing the co-existence of solid-like and liquid-like behaviours and not just characteristics that are an average of the two,” Mr Rogers says.
The theory he has developed to explain his findings, together with a number of theorists from the United Kingdom, is based on a previously published framework by two French scientists.
ENDS
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