Critical Minerals, Material Solutions - Hawke's Bay (7 September)

Event details

The topic for this year’s MacDiarmid Institute Lecture Series is Critical Minerals, Material Solutions. The world wants minerals, but scientists around Aotearoa are working on what we could make to use instead.

In association with the Hawke's Bay Branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand, join us in Napier on 7th September, when Anna Garden and Erin Leitao will discuss critical minerals - raw materials that are essential to many existing and future technologies and have been making headlines in recent times due to increasing supply chain vulnerabilities. Anna and Erin will present materials science solutions that are being developed and utilised right now, in Aotearoa New Zealand, to recycle, replace or reduce our need for critical minerals.

Associate Professor Anna Garden is an Associate Professor in Chemistry, University of Otago, and Principal Investigator and Deputy Director at the MacDiarmid Institute. Anna completed her PhD at the University of Otago and later held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Iceland. Her research focuses on using a computational approach to investigate catalysis of small molecule reactions on both extended and nanoparticle catalysts..

Associate Professor Erin Leitao is Associate Professor in the Chemical Sciences, University of Auckland, and Principal Investigator, MacDiarmid Institute. Erin’s career in science started in Canada with a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Victoria, followed by a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Calgary. Erin then went on to do postdoctoral research in Bristol before coming to New Zealand and joining the University of Auckland in late 2015. Erin’s research focuses on discovering ways to link earth abundant main group elements together with the eventual aim of making long chains (polymers), either with the same atom or two different atoms alternating along the polymer backbone.

Registration is required. Please register here via Eventbrite.

Not in Napier? We're also hosting this event in Wellington (16 September), and Christchurch (24 September).

Otherwise let us know where you'd like us to visit next!