A Great Team

One of the great things about my six months at Victoria University of Wellington has been being part of the marine natural products research laboratory.  The marine natural products group is lead by Associate Professor Peter Northcote.  A second natural products laboratory is headed by Dr. Rob Keyzers.  As well as marine natural products, Rob's group also investigates compounds that are important to the flavour of wine.  Researchers in both laboratories meet together once a week.  At these meetings members of the group update each other on their research and also on reading they have done about marine natural products research being carried out by other groups around the world.  Peter and Rob are busy academics who run courses, deliver lectures, oversee research and carry out a range of administrative duties.  Both, however, made time to take an interest in my research and to explain the relevant chemistry to me.

Below are profiles of the researchers I worked with in my laboratory.  As you will see, they come from a variety of backgrounds and few of them would have predicted that they would one day be carrying out high level chemical research.  (So keep an open mind and work hard because you too may one day end up doing something that right now you cannot even imagine.)  The researchers I worked with were really supportive of me and a lot of fun to be with.

Helen Woolner 

Helen is a Ph.D. student and has been my mentor – she has taught me all the techniques I have used in the

lab, explained the relevant chemistry and generally kept me on track. Helen attended Porirua College where

she was initially a diligent student but began to lose her way in Year 11 and ended up wagging school quite a bit. In Year 12 she became pregnant and started attending He Huarahi Tamariki School for Teenage Parents (HHT). Helen’s main interest was in art, but while at HHT she started picking up other subjects including biology which, thanks to a great teacher, she found she really enjoyed.

Helen decided she wanted to do science as a career and enrolled to do a B.Sc. at Victoria University. Initially she planned to major in biology but found that she was getting good grades in chemistry papers and ended up majoring in chemistry. At the end of her 2nd Year Helen did a summer internship in the marine natural products lab and a couple of years later did a summer internship in a natural products lab at IRL (Industrial Research Ltd – now called Callaghan Innovation). These experiences resulted in Helen deciding to do a M.Sc. in marine natural products. Once she successfully gained her M.Sc. Helen worked in a commercial laboratory for a while before taking up the opportunity to return to the marine natural products lab where she is now doing research towards her Ph.D.

Taitusi Taufa

Taitusi is another Ph.D. student in the marine natural products lab. He is from Tonga and, as a result of

enjoying science at school, completed a B.Sc. majoring in biology and chemistry at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. After graduating Taitusi returned to Tonga where he became a school teacher and taught at the high school he had previously attended as a student. Taitusi wanted to do postgraduate studies and was awarded a NZ Aid scholarship to undertake his M.Sc. in the marine natural products lab here at Victoria University. On the successful completion of his masters degree, Taitusi returned to Tonga to teach for a further two years before coming back to Wellington to commence his Ph.D.

Taitusi will not be the first person in his family to complete a doctorate – his wife was awarded her Ph.D. earlier this year. She completed her doctorate in fisheries economics at Kagoshima University in Japan. Taitusi’s research is based around finding novel compounds in a number of different sponges.

Dr Jonathan Singh

Jono is a post-doctoral Research Fellow in the marine natural products lab. This means that he has already completed his Ph.D. and is now carrying out further research. In particular, he is working with the New Zealand company Magritek to design experiments suitable for undergraduate university students to carry out

using Magritek’s new benchtop NMR spectrometers. Jono attended Onslow College where physics was his strongest science and the one he intended to focus on at university. However, once he started his B.Sc. Jono found that chemistry was now the science that he was experiencing most success with and decided to major in chemistry. The further he went with chemistry, the more Jono enjoyed it. He decided to join the marine natural products lab to pursue his M.Sc., partly because he preferred organic chemistry to inorganic chemistry. During his M.Sc. research Jono got to work on an exciting project based around a compound called peloruiside A which has good potential as an anti-cancer drug and this encouraged him to continue on and do his Ph.D. As the senior researcher in the lab, Jono looks after the day-to-day running of the lab and provides advice to the other students working in the lab.

Dr Sa Weon Hong

Sa Weon is a post-doctoral Research Fellow. Sa Weon grew up in South Korea and enjoyed science subjects when he was at school. At one stage Sa Weon thought about doing a medical degree but decided .

that he would like a career in scientific research. Sa Weon studied for his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees atHanyang University and then did his Ph.D. at Yonsei University which is one of the oldest universities in South Korea. At Hanyang University Sa Weon majored in biochemistry but for his Ph.D. he majored in chemistry. After obtaining his Ph.D. Sa Weon moved to the United States to do post-doctoral research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. While there he worked on synthesising a drug to fight tuberculosis. After two years in Chicago Sa Weon returned to Korea to do further post-doctoral research and to be a chemistry lecturer. He is now settled in Wellington and researching several species of sponges with the aim of discovering a molecule that will one day be  used as a drug to combat a disease.

Ethan Woolly
Ethan attended Te Puke High School. At school he did okay but says that he didn’t excel in his studies. However Ethan did have an interest in chemistry, partly because he found it to be a practical subject. Ethan enrolled in a B.Sc. degree here at Victoria University and found that the more chemistry he did, the more

interesting the subject became for him. Ethan is now in the second year of a M.Sc. degree and has a real passion for chemistry. When he completes his M.Sc. degree Ethan hopes to go on and do a Ph.D. Ethan is currently hunting for new molecules in a sponge that is found in the waters off Northland (and has already found some). In his photo Ethan is holding a solution that he produced during his research. If you look carefully you will see that it has a faint pink tinge. When he came to show his solution to the rest of us the pink colour had mysteriously disappeared. We found that the colour was present under the lights in the lab, but not in the presence of natural light coming through the window. Strange! And so far, unexplained.