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New research funding to develop selective insecticides!
Joel and Ron, teamed up with fellow SOLES academic Dr Emily Remnant, have been successful in procuring funding from Horticultural Innovation Australia (HIA) to create new insecticides that are safer and more selective. HIA collect levies from a wide range of produce growers and fund research into areas that will directly benefit those growers. Joel, Ron and Emily's project will focus on pollinator health, using structure-guided design approaches to create molecules that will selectively act on the honeybee pests Varroa destructor and/or the small hive beetle, while remaining innocuous to the honeybees themselves. The funding will complement a generous philanthropic donation that has...
Oscar’s Hut2Hut 2022
Oscars Hut2Hut is a 100-km trail run in the Victorian Alps with epic amounts of ascent and descent (5800 m of each) and a *lot* of technical sections. A good chunk of it is above the treeline with spectacular 360-degree views - on a good day... which is the attraction. I (Joel) ran it in 2019 (with perfect weather) and decided to go back for more this year, lured again by the scenery and the hope of good weather (or at least not sleet and sub-zero 100-km/h winds). As it turned out, I must have been in *someone's* good books because the weather turned it on again - perfect running conditions (~8-20 degrees across the time I was out there - 5 am till 1:30 am next day). These technical...
Taylor and Rezwan become truer and bluer
Congratulations to former Mackay lab PhD student Taylor Szyszka and current Ataide lab researcher Rezwan Siddiquee for having their Australian permanent residency just confirmed. They will be saying "that isn't a knife..." and sandpapering cricket balls before you know it!
Have been off X for months but had to log in to see response to AF3. I am much less smart than the authors - but am I (and Erin) the only ones to think that the helical afros that it makes out of IDRs is totally weird? Am I missing something?
Amazing story from the lab down the corridor - @RezwanSidd working with Sandro Ataide and Ruth Hall in @SydneySOLES at @Sydney_Science - now they will be thrown into the gladiators' pit I suspect with the other protagonists that prowl this landscape! 🙂 Great piece of work!
New lab paper accepted FEBS J
Mario's long journey to publish the carefully methodical work he and others have done on the inter-subunit interaction network within the NuRD complex has finally come to fruition as his paper is now accepted in FEBS J. We're quite fond of the paper because it...
Science in the swamp
As part of Science Week, Taylor, our outreach and media darling, has been demonstrating solar power (with robots of course) at the Science in the Swamp event, to an audience captivated small children... Note the "Nutty Scientists"...
You don’t often see horn players in bike shoes…
...but Ann captured Joel playing at the Con a few weeks ago breaking that little-known but cardinal rule of jazz...
Neil is done and dusted…
...with that PhD thing. Congratulations to Neil who got completion letter this week letting him know that has satisfied the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Officially we can't call him Dr Neil until the actual graduation ceremony,...
Chay wins a prize for her thesis!
Chayenne Ghazi, who worked with us recently, was awarded a prize for the thesis that she presented based on her work here. The HAS-prize is annually awarded to students who produce excellent gradutation assignments at lab schools. It is named after the 'Haagse...
Jason S ties the knot (in a sporren)
Jason has jetted half way round the world to we his betrothed in St Andrews on a glorious spring day. He was resplendent in a kilt made from the MacSchmidberger tartan. What a dashing couple they...
Ana and Callum become parents. Again!
Congratulations to Ana, Callum and Emma, who have just welcomed a new family member into the world - meet Elliot, everyone... Everyone is...
Katschi’s family portrait
Neil, Katschi and new (March 2017) arrival Livvy pose for the camera...
Taylor’s science communication career continues…
As one of the organizers of the Sydney version of the International March for Science, which is being held on Earth Day (22 April), Taylor can now be seen on youtube promoting the event here. We're expecting her to have her own youtube channel...
Katschi becomes a mum!
Katschi Bendak, formerly from Joel's lab and now working across at CCIA in Randwick, has taken a little time off to become a mum - and the result of her efforts is Olivia Marie Wilson, born on her due date (with German punctuality) of 15/03/17 at 51 cm and 3.4 kg....
Morgan’s latest paper from chilly Dundee
Morgan Gadd, ex-PhD student of Jacqui's, has just published a paper from his postdoc time with Alessio Cuilli - a nice piece of work where they examine one of their bi-functional bromodomain inhibitors and show that it forms a tight ternary complex with their small...
Taylor takes to the radio
As one of the organizers of the Sydney version of the International March for Science, which is being held on Earth Day (22 April), Taylor chatted to the Drive Show host Danny Chifley on 2SER last week, to tell him what it was all about - and answer curly questions...