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MacDiarmid
Macdiarmid
20
August 2012
ISSUE
Intergrown Crystals of a
Metal-organic Framework
Researchers: Sivakumar Balakrishnan,
Shane Telfer, and
Alison Downard
The image shows a network of
intergrown crystals.
Each crystal can be recognized
by its clean facets and the
regular angles−usually 90
degrees−between these faces.
The individual crystals are
approximately 1/25th of the
size of a sugar granule. In this
case, they are not freestanding
like a sugar crystal, but have
merged with one another as
they have grown.
Image captured by a FEI
Quanta 200 Scanning Electron
Microscope.
10 YEARS
THE MACDIARMID INSTITUTE
OF ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY
The MacDiarmid Institute
PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand
Phone: 64-4-463 5950
Fax: 64-4-463 5237
E-mail: macdiarmid-institute@vuw.ac.nz
Website: www.macdiarmid.ac.nz
ISSN 1176-1423 (Print)
ISSN 1178-4911 (Online)

2 INTERFACE August 2012
From the Director
of the MacDiarmid Institute
WOW!
When we look at all that has been
accomplished in the past ten years, and the
base we have established to secure our strong and expansive
future, what else is there to say?
The vision held by original protagonists Paul Callaghan,
Richard Blaikie, Steve Durbin, Roger Reeves, Joe Trodahl and
others was ground breaking, particularly in a New Zealand
context at that time. Their vision sought to make all of us
more empowered and more directive, to achieve more in New
Zealand and for New Zealand.
We all saw the merit in this and actively engaged. Every
one of us can rightly accept credit for taking that early vision
and generating a reality that represents a way of using our
resources to the maximum and taking our science research to
a higher level. The vision was about much, much more than
achieving higher scientific outcomes. It also set forth a perspective
for educating our postgraduate students, working with the
government and engaging the public.
We already knew how interesting and useful science was
and it became our responsibility as individuals, and as a collective,
to make this clear to everyone else, to highlight the role
that science does and can have in positively advancing all of
our lives. Scientists were charged with bringing science to the
forefront, making sure that science held a frontline place in
decision making, future proofing, relevance and importance
across the breadth of New Zealand activities.
These were big ideals to aspire to. This was a vision where
scientists participated with others to define New Zealand’s
future all the while driving New Zealand science to higher levels
of impact, international recognition and potential commercial
transference. We invested our time into working with our
postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows so that they
would see the broader context and possibilities of their work. Our
annual symposia for students and postdocs took on a life of their
own. They are now led by our students and post-docs, inspiring
them to take even more responsibility for their own education.
They developed their own voice through the instigation of the
MacDiarmid Emerging Scientists Association – proof positive of
the revolution taking place. With Nanocamp and the Discovery
Awards we are bringing this revolution to our younger students,
our Mäori and Pacific Islanders, our future.
Ten years, 1000 publications, 300+ Alumni, National and
International science plaudits, Nanocamp, MESA, Are Angels
OK?, Discovery Awards, sold out public lectures, radio shows,
the Transit of Venus Forum, school visits, Nature papers, start-up
companies, collaboration, fun, vibrancy, collegiality, new
networks, new students, leadership, the list of achievements goes
on. We’ve come a long way from the deal on the napkin and
we’ve accomplished a great deal. But this is very much only the
beginning. Our vista is wide and shining and we have in our hands
the ability to make the future spectacular, all it requires is hard
work, dedication and a firm belief that we can and will make it.
—Kathryn McGrath
Hot off the press
Matthew G. Cowan, Juan Olguín,
Suresh Narayanaswamy, Jeffery
L. Tallon, and Sally Brooker,
Reversible Switching of a Cobalt
Complex by Thermal, Pressure,
and Electrochemical Stimuli:
Abrupt, Complete, Hysteretic
Spin Crossover, Journal of the
American Chemical Society, 134(6),
2892–2894 and cover feature,
2012
Matthew G. Cowan and Sally
Brooker, Nine non-symmetric
pyrazine-pyridine imide-based
complexes: reversible redox and
isolation of [MII/III(pypzca)2]0/+
when M = Co, Fe, Dalton
Trans., Dalton Transactions,
41(5), 1465-1474 and Cover
feature (2012) DOI: 10.1039/
c2dt90002e
Tribute to Sir Paul Callaghan,
Journal of Magnetic
Resonance, 218, cover
feature (2012). DOI: 10.1016/
S1090-7807(12)00164-4
Davide Mercadante, Laurence D.
Melton, Gillian E. Norris, Trevor S.
Loo, Martin A.K. Williams, Renwick
C.J. Dobson, Geoffrey B. Jameson,
Bovine b-Lactoglobulin Is Dimeric
Under Imitative Physiological
Conditions: Dissociation
Equilibrium and Rate Constants
over the pH Range of 2.5–7.5,
Biophysical Journal, 103(2),
303-312 and Cover Feature (2012)
DOI:10.1016/j.bpj.2012.05.041

MACDIARMID INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY 3
The Inside Story of the MacDiarmid Institute
by Elizabeth Connor
Not long before he passed away, Sir Paul Callaghan
shared his memories of how the MacDiarmid Institute
came to be.
It all began in 2001 when Paul met the great Kiwi chemist
Alan MacDiarmid.
At age 53, Paul Callaghan was a world-renowned experimental
physicist having pioneered a new field in NMR Spectroscopy
at Massey University. He had just moved to Wellington to take
up a position with Victoria University of Wellington as Alan
MacDiarmid Professor of Physical Sciences.
Around the same time, one year after winning the Nobel
Prize for discovering conducting polymers (plastics that conduct
electricity), Alan MacDiarmid returned from America for a New
Zealand lecture tour. When these two great minds met, the
seed of a vision was planted.
“For me that was an epiphany,” Paul said later. “Alan wasn’t
just a chemist. He was a poet. He had the showman’s craft
of being able to capture people’s hearts. He would explain
to lead Victoria University’s bid to establish a centre here in the
capital.
“I had time on my hands,” said Paul, “so I thought, why not
– that could be fun! So we put together a bid and we called it
the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials.”
After the first round of the selection process bidders were
given an opportunity, before the second round, to reorganise
their bids and perhaps amalgamate. “This turned out to be
extremely important for us,” said Paul, “because in parallel
with the Victoria University of Wellington bid was one from
the University of Canterbury in nanotechnology. It was led by
Richard Blaikie and involved several collaborators of ours.”
It was Paul’s old friend and Victoria University colleague,
Joe Trodahl, who suggested they form a joint bid with the
University of Canterbury.
“Within a day or two I’d got on a plane, flown to
Christchurch and met with the University of Canterbury
players. I remember being driven from the airport to this
“IT WAS NO ACCIDENT
WE TOOK THE
MACDIARMID NAME—
WHAT WE BECAME
WAS SOMEHOW AN
EXTENSION OF ALL THAT
ALAN EMBODIED IN
TERMS OF VALUES AND
HIS IDEA ABOUT THE
ROLE OF SCIENCE IN THE
MODERN WORLD.”
—PAUL CALLAGHAN
chemistry in very simple terms, in a kind of deliberate, beautiful
prose with his down-home kiwi accent and he brought tears
to people’s eyes. He filled venues to capacity; he filled the
Wellington Town Hall. I’d never seen that before, a scientist
getting people in those numbers and moving them emotionally.”
This feat was to be repeated by Paul himself in 2011.
“Alan was also political,” Paul added. “He saw that science
and technology had social and political impacts and he wasn’t
afraid to make politically provocative statements. I saw the
potential to move beyond the whinging scientist complaining
about lack of funding; to say ‘Stop this crap! Let’s start acting
positively by working in partnership with society and politics.’”
In 2001, the Tertiary Education Commission was looking to fund
six new Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs). Paul was asked
restaurant where they gathered after work. We got a table
napkin out and drew up the deal. I was convinced that the
stumbling block for any partnership would be anxiety over
how the money was spent, and that once we’d sorted that out
everything else would run smoothly. That was my belief and
that’s how it turned out.”
A simple rule stated that the division of funding would be
based on the Principle Investigators (PIs) as a unit of currency.
It wouldn’t depend on which University or Crown Research
Institute they were based at and, if they decided to move, the
funding would follow the PIs.
This was quite a revolutionary idea. In most cases funding
is given to a particular institution or research project and
researchers spend much of their time applying for grants,

4 INTERFACE August 2012
trying to define what they hope to achieve and how long
a project might take. In contrast, the MacDiarmid Institute
system put faith in the PIs, giving them the freedom and
flexibility to develop their research interests and gather a team
around them with minimal bureaucratic interference.
The PIs included researchers from the University of
Canterbury and Victoria University of Wellington as well as
associated partners from Massey University, the University of
Otago and Industrial Research Limited.
“Once we had established the principle of fairness and distribution,”
Paul recalled. “We were then able to meet formally
and thrash out what the science was going to be and find
themes which unified the two bids. This determined where
we needed capital equipment and what teams we could put
together from the different sites of the MacDiarmid Institute. I
recall that whole process being a very happy one.”
The unified bid was one of twelve chosen out of around fifty
by an international panel to go through to the
final round.
“We realised that the final round would not
involve discussion of research capability (that
would have been determined by the international
reviewing process). All that would matter
would be value to New Zealand,” said Paul.
This insight got them thinking beyond
research to the wider social function and
responsibility of the MacDiarmid Institute. The
PIs, who received funding, would be expected
to contribute to the MacDiarmid Institute’s
broader objectives of education, innovation and
catalysing change. They would be encouraged
to draw on their other talents, interests and
connections to do this.
“It was no accident we took the MacDiarmid
name,” Paul said. “What we became was
somehow an extension of all that Alan
embodied in terms of values and his idea about the role of
science in the modern world.”
Their approach was unusual but it won over the panel. The
MacDiarmid Institute was selected as a Centre of Research
Excellence and allocated a large share of the Tertiary Education
Commission’s capital fund, the total fund amounting to over
twenty million dollars.
Massey University friend and colleague Ian Watson describes
Paul’s strategy for success: “It was to set and meet criteria
higher than that specified in the applications, … an ethos that
he then transferred to the management of the CoRE.”
After winning the bid Paul worked with a young lawyer,
Geof Shirtcliffe, to devise a partnership agreement to safeguard
the values of the MacDiarmid Institute and make sure no single
partner became dominant.
“That was the best money we ever spent,” Paul said.
“It fundamentally hasn’t changed since and it’s been used
as a model by many other CoREs. What came out of that
agreement was a paradox. We were a Centre of Research
Excellence but we were clearly not a centre. We were a
partnership. And we were about so much more than research
excellence – so this paradox emerged. We became a sort-of
non-CoRE.”
“Having started that paradox we thought, why not take it
further. We decided to be an Institute that employed no one,
owned no IP and certainly didn’t own its own capital. We
realised there was a marvellous infrastructure already in place
within the New Zealand university and CRI system that could
manage that for us. What we wanted to do was add value
to what was already there through better quality equipment,
more research time, more research fellows, more postdoctoral
positions, more graduate students and partnerships between
CRIs and universities beyond anything we’d seen before.” ”
“We were doing something different,” said Paul, “and I
think that made us exciting to the media, to the politicians and
to the Ministry of Education. It built good will for the CoREs,
which translated right across the whole of the Association.”
On a nationwide level the MacDiarmid
Institute became an exemplar for the
other CoREs gaining political support
from both major parties.
In 2008, after leading the successful
bid for a further six years of funding,
Paul stood down as Director. He was
succeeded by Richard Blaikie, followed
by Kathryn McGrath in 2011.
“It is a struggle for any Director to lift
the Investigators’ eyes above the horizon
to the big overarching goals of culture
change,” Paul said. “It requires a lot of
energy and effort. I think the new leadership
understands that very well.”
In the last few months of his life, Paul
poured his energy into organising the
Transit of Venus forum. Held in Gisborne
and Tolaga Bay in June this year, the
forum reflected the ideals represented by the MacDiarmid
Instiute. Local iwi, politicians, scientists, artists, economists,
academics, students and many more gathered together to
watch Venus pass in front of the Sun, reflect on our shared
past and look towards the future with a feeling of optimism
and collaboration.
Paul believed that New Zealand was capable of achieving
greatness. Andrew Coy says it well: “Paul believed in us. He
believed absolutely that you would achieve these goals and
he would let you know that repeatedly. He would support you
every step of the way and then he would lead the celebrations
when you finally succeeded.”
“One of the most remarkable developments of the
MacDiarmid Institute has been the MacDiarmid Emerging
Scientists Association,” Paul added. “These people are
the product of what we set out to change. Starting as our
graduate students they have been abroad, come back and
joined us... I think that group is the greatest indication of our
success. They are the seed corn for the future. And out of
that group will come remarkable leaders for the MacDiarmid
Institute in the long term.”
“PAUL BELIEVED IN US.
HE BELIEVED ABSOLUTELY
THAT YOU WOULD
ACHIEVE THESE GOALS
AND HE WOULD LET YOU
KNOW THAT REPEATEDLY.
HE WOULD SUPPORT YOU
EVERY STEP OF THE WAY
AND THEN HE WOULD
LEAD THE CELEBRATIONS
WHEN YOU FINALLY
SUCCEEDED.”
—ANDREW COY

MACDIARMID INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY 5
A Risky Undertaking Pays Off by Glenda Lewis
The Transit of Venus Forum was a high risk
undertaking from the outset.
The national forum about science and the economy,
environment and people, initiated by Sir Paul Callaghan and
the MacDiarmid Institute, was to be held in Tolaga Bay and
Gisborne in mid-winter 2012, in association with the rare
occurrence of the Transit of Venus. As members of former
Transit of Venus expeditions may have warned organisers,
banking your reputation and fortunes on a distant astronomical
event that could well be completely obscured by cloud – after
several years planning, and considerable expense – is about as
high risk as it gets. Furthermore, the odds were less than even
that the leader of this particular expedition would survive long
enough to see it. Of course, to our great regret, Sir Paul did not
defy the odds and passed away in March.
On the eve of the Transit, 5 June, the people of Uawa Tolaga
Bay received a severe weather warning. The forecast in the
Dominion Post led the entire North Island to expect heavy rain
and gale force winds. Many areas of the South Island were
snowbound. The Tolaga Bay community had been planning
this largely outdoor event for years, intensively in the last
few months. They were expecting several hundred people to
attend, including the 275 delegates to the Transit of Venus
Forum, as well as astronomers and poets from Europe. A week
before, in what appeared to be a dreadful omen, one of their
waka had overturned and broken up in a heavy swell while
practising for the big day.
But miraculously, on 6 June, delegates departed from
Gisborne in a mild and rosy dawn without a breath of wind or
drop of rain. Students from Tolaga Bay Area School boarded
each bus and gave a running commentary on the journey
north, pointing out sites of current and historical interest,
including Whangara, the coastal settlement where The Whale
Rider was filmed. The powhiri at Hauiti Marae in Tolaga Bay
had a riveting energy and excitement. Manuhiri followed in
Ministers Stephen Joyce, Hekia Parata (pictured below), Anne
Tolley, and Leader of the Opposition, David Shearer.

6 INTERFACE August 2012
Continued from page 5
Delegates then bused to the wharf where hundreds of locals
had gathered in an improvised amphitheatre at the entrance.
This architectural splendour, which extends 660m towards the
Pacific horizon, parallel to the dramatic vertical cliffs which
form the bay, has been steadily restored over the last 15 years.
Local farmer Clive Bibby, and Tolaga Bay businesswoman Dolly
Mitchell, led a now legendary campaign to raise the necessary
$5 million required to save the wharf. The Transit of Venus
celebrations provided a galvanizing incentive to complete the
project.
From the end of the wharf you can see the arched shelter
in the cliffs where Tupaia, Cook’s co-navigator and interpreter,
slept during their first sojourn in this country in 1769,
following their observation of the Transit of Venus three
months before in Tupaia’s home island of Tahiti.
The wharf re-dedication ceremony concluded with the
national anthem, whereupon the Sun broke through the
clouds and all heads turned to the sky. Those with viewing
glasses gasped at the clarity of the shadow of Venus, now well
into its passage across the face of the Sun. Local astronomers,
including John Drummond, and Wellingtonian Terry Galuszka,
allowed the throngs on the wharf, and later at the school, to
see the Transit through their array of telescopes. It was quite a
day, and the music never stopped.
The children at Tolaga Bay Area School, aged from 5-18,
sang their hearts out, and prize-winning senior drama students
performed their original play about Captain Cook, Joseph
Banks, Tupaia, and their ancestors. Dual heritage and shared
future was the theme of the Tolaga Bay event, and was never
more apt.
The two-day Forum that followed in Gisborne was held
on the banks of the Turanganui River, overlooking what is
arguably the most significant place in our shared history - the
bank where about one hundred warriors performed a haka
before Cook and his men on the opposite side of the
river. Encouraged by Tupaia, who was able to make
himself understood, Cook and one of the local
men laid down arms and met each other
half way on a large boulder in the
middle of the river engaging in the
first hongi between Maori and European.
When Sir Paul realized that he would not make it to
the Forum, he entrusted the ongoing mission to Sir Peter
Gluckman and colleagues – Professors Charles Daugherty,
David Bibby, Kate McGrath, Bill Manhire and Lydia Wevers,
and Dr Di McCarthy, CEO of the Royal Society of NZ. Sir Peter
helped finalise the programme, bring more speakers on board,
and promptly reported the outcomes to government.
The line-up of 37 speakers —all New Zealanders —were
as diverse as the delegates. They included: Sam Johnson, of
Student Army fame; head of NZ Trade and Enterprise, Peter
Chrisp; Tamaki College Principal, Soana Pamaka; Listener
journalist Toby Manhire; entrepreneur Derek Handley; Forest
& Bird advocate Nicola Toki; and young Maori banker, Kristen
Kohere-Soutar.
Topics discussed included science and the economy, the
Maori economy, land use, environment restoration, communications,
and human development.
Kim Hill chaired three parallel public panel discussions
for broadcast by Radio New Zealand National. The Forum’s
webcast audience sent in questions through the MacDiarmid
Institute sponsored on-line game, Pounamu. The MacDiarmid
Institute team then relayed these questions to speakers.
The Forum was just the beginning. By their own account,
delegates left Gisborne inspired and committed, impressed
with what Tairawhiti had to offer – and with
suitcases full of unused thermals.

MACDIARMID INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY 7
Left: Hundreds of visitors tested the strength of the renovated wharf following the re-dedication
ceremony, and witnessed Venus beginning its seven-hour passage across the face of the Sun.
Top: Children from Tolaga Bay Area School were among the privileged few in New Zealand to
witness the Transit of Venus.
Above left: VUW student, Ross McInnes-Leish, enjoys a solitary moment on the warm beach.
Above center: The shadow of Venus surprised viewers with its clarity.
Optics have come a long way since 1769.
If you did not have the privilege of attending
the Forum, you can watch all 37 x 7-minute
presentations and link to the series of associated
Radio New Zealand National panel
discussions and talks chaired by Kim Hill, at
http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/events/2012-
transit-of-venus-forum-lifting-our-horizon/
forum-programme/ These were broadcast
from 22 July to 24 August.

8 INTERFACE August 2012
Game for anything?
Pounamu at the Transit of Venus Forum by Stephanie Pride
At 8:25 am on Thursday 7 June, as the first session
of the Transit of Venus Forum was about to get
underway on the banks of the Turanganui
River, the MacDiarmid Institute’s Professor
Shaun Hendy and Dr Stephanie Pride from
StratEDGY Strategic Foresight, along
with a talented team of ‘game guides’
from the MacDiarmid Institute were in
the room next door, fingers ready on
laptops, looking at the yet to be populated
Pounamu game dashboard projected onto the
wall in front of them.
‘If you build it, they will come’ is a phrase that has entered
the popular lexicon, but having built the Pounamu game in a
scant seven weeks, would people come to play in the future
world we had created? Would people want to explore what
could happen next in a world where there were more demands
and fewer resources, but New Zealand had the most science
literate population in the world?
Suddenly, ‘microforecast’ cards started appearing on the
game dashboard – some people, it transpired, couldn’t wait
to get started – and the game was off with a momentum
that continued through all 15 hours of game play. A few
players played for almost the entire duration, with one or two
admitting that being snowbound in Canterbury had given
them an unexpected opportunity to give in to the game’s
addictive pull!
Complementing the programme that was taking place in the
room next door, the game’s starting topic centred on affordability,
science and prosperity. Players explored a wide range of
ways in which science could increase prosperity, from personally
targeted medicine to solutions to small particle pollution to
the opportunities presented by immersive interfaces.
Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology
They also made the most of the game format, choosing player
names like ‘Flying Hippos,’ ‘Apteryx’ and ‘Tree Huggers’ and
having humorous and lively, though still sciencebased,
conversations on the many uses for animal
poo and the feasibility of flying shoes.
Alongside the creative levity encouraged by the
game format, players also had longer and deeper
conversations about how to both use and protect
the New Zealand environment, how we might
learn and earn a living in the future and discussed
the relationship between scientific and indigenous
knowledge. The game blog followed topics that were
also being discussed in the Forum, and questions from the
game were fed back into the Forum’s question and answer
sessions by Dr Natalie Plank, e.g. questions from the game
about the use and protection of the Antarctic environment were
shared in the Q & A for the Forum session on how we use and
manage our resources.
As players from all over New Zealand posted their ideas,
behind the scenes the game guiding team, including Elf
Eldridge, Dr Natalie Plank, Dr John Watt and Dr Geoff Willmott,
were spotting ‘super interesting’ ideas, identifying emerging
themes and trends, posting up new challenges in the game blog
to take the conversation further and watching the wall of ideas
grow and grow.
When the game closed off 15 hours and 4,688 microforecasts
later, it was clear that New Zealanders were not only ready
to engage in online and gaming modes to discuss the big
questions around science and the future, but that they really
wanted this to be the beginning, not the end of the conversation.
You can find out more about the game, the ideas that
were shared, who else was behind it, and what happens next
on the Pounamu site. www.pounamu.gen.nz
The world’s best physical scientists attracted to
New Zealand through the MacDiarmid Institute’s
International AMN conference series
Our biennial, International AMN conference series was
launched in 2003 to shine the spotlight on New Zealand science
and scientists within the international community.
The conferences have attracted major speakers to these shores,
including seven Nobel Laureates in Physics and Chemistry.
AMN conferences now routinely attract over 450 delegates,
double the number of those who attended the original conference,
with more than half coming from outside New Zealand.
In conjunction with the science programme of these conferences,
our major keynote speakers partake in a variety of outreach
activities, ranging from discussion forums with our young people,
public lectures attracting 1000-2000 members of the public, an
innovative art exhibition, radio and other media interviews, to
engagement with school children and teachers. AMN conferences
are now highlights of the international conference calendar.
AMN-6 promises to be no exception. We look forward to
welcoming Professor Joanna Aizenberg of Harvard University,
Professor Krzysztof Matyjazewski of Carnegie Mellon University,
Professor Don Eigler, the Kavli Prize Laureate for Nanoscience
in 2010, Dan Nocera, Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Roald Hoffmann, Frank
H T Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus at Cornell
University as keynote speakers. We will also welcome a number
of leading plenary and invited speakers from around the world.
Technical symposia will cover a range of areas of advanced
materials and nanotechnology, including nanoengineered
materials and devices, nanoscale optics and photonics,
plasmonics, nanoparticles, bionanotechnologies, biomolecular
assembly, nanopore science, conducting polymers and molecular
materials, hybrid materials, novel semiconductor materials and
soft matter, superconductivity and spintronics.
AMN6 will be held in Auckland in February 2013.
Registrations opened 1 August 2012. See www.amn-6.com

MACDIARMID INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY 9
The Long, Winding Road that is
Commercialisation by Vicki Hyde
It’s long been a given that New Zealand needs to pay
close attention to the commercialisation of research
in order to build successful, innovative companies that
can take resulting products and services to the world.
However, it’s a lot easier to say that, than to do it.
Looking back over the past 10
years of MacDiarmid Institute
projects, Deputy Director
Commercialisation and Engagement
Professor Simon Brown says that
there have been some great
successes. Certainly, some researchers
have been involved with highly
successful niche spin-offs - Magritek
and Anzode come to mind - and
Brown intends to see that these
become the rule, rather than the
exception. In the past 12 months,
he’s seen better processes and more
resources developed to achieve this.
“We’re now investing more consistently in commercialisation,”
he says.
Traditionally, academically focused research in New
Zealand has tended to remain just that, academic.
Occasionally, an entrepreneurially minded researcher
may see the commercial potential in their line of
work but, until recently, the hurdles from blackboard
to prototype to final product have been too high for
many to even consider heading down that route.
The commercial operations of New Zealand
universities have been expensive to run, and
generating a stream of projects to keep such facilities
operating full-time has not been easy. A more
diffuse, but intensely collaborative process - very
much like the MacDiarmid Institute collaborative
research model - may be the answer. It’s early days yet, but
those involved are enthusiastic about the new focus.
Getting Greater Engagement
Brown’s brief is to encourage direct academic and industry
engagement, building the commercialisation potential into
research at a much earlier stage than has previously been
common. Brown is aided in this by a range of support staff,
from enthusiastic commercialisation coordinators to helpful
tech transfer offices, inspiring academic mentors for students,
and experienced entrepreneurial advisors in business incubators
and seed investors.
Commercialisation workshops draw from the broad range
of contacts and collaborations fostered by the MacDiarmid
Institute. Postgrad fellowships encourage students to start
thinking early on in their career about the potential for research
applications.
“Getting people involved has got to be done on all levels,”
says Brown. Wellington
That ranges from Principal Investigators to
postgraduate students, building a buzz and reducing perceived
barriers. 17-18 He points November to the example of 2011 Silicon Valley, where one
successful group would typically spin off into further successes.
That means being prepared to enable a variety of
approaches in managing the tensions between the traditionally
open, publication-focused academic environment
and the more IP-protective commercial arena.
“There are different ways of doing these things, and
licensing is an option that is often forgotten. Some
technologies will be right for development in a small
company, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a start-up
with a major investment - there are other ways of progressing
these things. Some ideas would be completely stifled in
an incubator environment; others would thrive.
“One of the things we have to do is to be flexible, to try
to pick the right approach for each new technology, and to
keep a close eye on what things
are and aren’t working.”
MANY MACDIARMID
INSTITUTE PROJECTS ARE Assessing Success
AT A VERY EARLY-STAGE The new focus is already
producing results. Of around ten
COMMERCIALLY, SO AN
research projects being vetted
EARLY ASSESSMENT FOR for commercial potential, Brown
COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL says three to four are progressing
on to Pre-Seed Accelerator Fund
AND, IN PARTICULAR,
applications.
IDENTIFYING A MARKET
The programme has had a
FOR ANY LIKELY RESULTING good start and there are plenty
PRODUCTS OR SERVICES, IS
more projects in the pipeline. All
of MacDiarmid Institute’s partner
VITAL—SIMON BROWN
institutions have scoping projects
on the way. As the new generation
of switched-on students comes through, that is likely to
become a standard feature of research projects.
Brown acknowledges many MacDiarmid Institute projects are
at a very early-stage commercially, so an early assessment for
commercial potential and, in particular, identifying a market for
any likely resulting products or services, is vital. In the past, this
has been something of a random walk, with initial investment
focusing on the research and likely applications coming late to
the party.
“Previously there hasn’t been sufficient clarity in identifying
what market there could be. People often have had some
ideas of what the final product might be, but when there’s
a lot of technical uncertainty, it’s difficult to nail down the
final prospect. The further down the track, the easier it is
to be certain but by getting a better idea of the potential at
early stages we think we can gently push projects in the right
directions.”

10 INTERFACE August 2012
Brown notes that even with the best possible support many
projects will not be commercially successful. He’s conscious that
the New Zealand environment needs to get past its intolerance
for failure. He’s also keen to see a broader awareness of alternative
routes to success, citing the value of having sustainability
assessments alongside commercial assessments.
“There’s a real role for innovation in driving sustainability
as well. It becomes clear that if you can build sustainability
into your business strategy, it does give you a commercial
advantage.”
Brown expects to introduce the first scoping projects
along these lines later this year, and believes the MacDiarmid
Institute now has firmer foundations on which to build such an
aspiration.
Collaborations Breed Success
Broader connections throughout the scientific and business
worlds have smoothed the MacDiarmid Institute’s path to
commercial success. The traditional links with the country’s
universities and Crown Research Institutes have been boosted
by greater collaboration with regional incubators and recruitment
of researchers with commercialisation experience.
“There’s a genuine understanding...among the researchers
that there’s a lot of benefit in collaboration.”
Sharing equipment, cross-working theoretical and experimental
research, and exchanging ideas over a cup of coffee
all help to build ties and reduce some of the uncertainties that
can arise from questions of intellectual property restrictions and
commercial sensitivities.
Brown notes that the MacDiarmid Institute’s natural process
of working is in collaborative mode, and that this has helped in
establishing links with the likes of the tech transfer offices.
“Fundamentally everyone wants the same thing - to boost
the economy to make more use of science and technology to
drive growth.”
Commercialisation—the Next Generation
by Vicki Hyde
To paraphrase an ancient adage: “Teach a student how
to do research, and you get research. Teach a student
how to commercialise that research, and you could get
a whole new industry.”
At least that’s the aim of the MacDiarmid Institute Research
Commercialisation Fellowships which encourage research
students and post-docs to look at their research with new eyes,
evaluating the possibilities for commercial application that will
take them from the lab bench to the retail shelf.
The first student has just come through the system. While
waiting for her PhD work to be assessed, Laura Domigan
began scoping the possibilities for protein fibrils to be used in a
new reagent-based product. This work took research from the
Biomolecular Interaction Centre and looked at the potential market,
covering everything from users to pricing. The work has now
progressed to Pre-Seed Accelerator Fund application, with the aim
of developing a working commercial prototype to test the market.
Mentoring has been provided via Dr Rachel Wright, Education
Manager for incubator-seed funder PowerHouse Ventures,
and lecturer in science and entrepreneurship at the universities
of Canterbury and Lincoln. Wright is enthusiastic about the
Fellowships.
“It’s an excellent programme because it gives students the
idea that research can be commercialised even if you’re coming
from an academic setting. The students have to look at things
quite differently,” notes Wright.
The flip from pure research involves tackling a whole new
set of research, including understanding things like commercial
development, market identification, patenting and pricing, but
most important of all, identifying what problem is being solved
by the new application. Learning about these aspects means
that when the students are doing their research, they’re more
aware of what areas could be pursued in a commercial sense,
says Wright. And this awareness is expected to follow them
throughout their research careers.
“The earlier we can educate [students] on the need for
innovation, the better.”
Protein nanofibres made from waste proteins as captured by a transmission
electron microscope. These tiny, strong nanofibres are being used as a high
surface area nanoscaffold to immobilise enzymes with commercial applications.
(Scale bar = 200 nm).
With MacDiarmid Institute and PowerHouse providing the
push, a concerted effort can be made to assess the direction and
nature of the research. This has value, even if the scoping shows
there’s no viable commercial possibility. As in basic science, a
null result in commercialisation can be a useful thing, especially
if caught early allowing attention and resources to be directed
elsewhere.
Wright believes that getting to students early on in their career
will provide the foundation for a whole new generation of entrepreneurs
and innovators. At the very least it encourages them to
consider what potential there may be in their research. It’s got a
very practical underpinning.
“For our GDP to grow, a large proportion of that research
needs to have a commercial outcome.“ But it’s not all about the
national good. The students themselves could benefit with the
chance of being involved in any ensuing commercial development.
Researchers can be offered shareholdings or advisory roles
in spin-offs, something which may suit them more than the traditional
route of taking on a managerial role.

MACDIARMID INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY 11
Long Life in Battery Development
The humble battery may seem a bit prosaic for an
organisation called the MacDiarmid Institute for
Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, but research
into battery technology, and the underlying science,
has been a part of the MacDiarmid Institute since its
founding.
Before it’s founding, in fact, as Alan MacDiarmid himself
gained a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 for the discovery
and development of conductive polymers, which had lead to
the commercial development of plastic batteries. MacDiarmid
shared that recognition with an American and a Japanese
researcher, foreshadowing the institutional and international
collaborations that have characterised the Centre of Research
Excellence named for him.
It wasn’t all the result of carefully planned research. A
laboratory accident involving an incorrect synthesis produced
a metallic-looking polymer, sparking the thought that perhaps
it might conduct electricity like a metal. Then a conversation
over a seminar coffee break led to further experimentation and
collaborations with industrial counterparts.
Thus began the hunt for conducting polymers that were
strong, flexible and – always an important factor in industrial
applications – cost-effective. Patents followed, and the new
field of plastic or organic electronics began to develop applications
from plastic batteries to solar cells, electronic paper to
molecular computers.
That sort of development can take a while, as Professor
From Molecules to the Market
Taking single molecules and tethering them to a surface
to produce highly controllable functions as the basis
for precision sensors, medical diagnostic tools or even
lighting arrays may sound like the stuff of science fiction,
but the groundwork is being tackled in the University of
Canterbury lab of Professor Alison Downard.
Simon Hall, MacDiarmid Institute PI and director of Massey
University’s Anzode Research Centre has found. His work with
PhD student Micheal Liu in 2002-3 lead to the development of
a new stable, high-cycle zinc electrode for nickel-zinc rechargeable
batteries. Initial angel investment by New Zealand,
Australian and US supporters saw the patenting and licensing
of the new technology. In 2004, US based company Anzode
was established to bring the technology to market. Prototyping
and partnering is under way in the hopes of taking some of
the $50 billion rechargeable market, particularly in the area of
telecommunications backups and hybrid vehicles.
Hybrids are also of interest to another battery development
to come out of the University of Canterbury with MacDiarmid
Institute collaborations. Emissions standards will see the battery
market for microhybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) grow to 34
million annually in the next five years, with consequent need
for cheaper, more-efficient varieties. That’s where the ArcActive
lead carbon battery may well be able to step in.
It recently gained attention at the invitation-only CleanEquity
2012 conference, winning an award for Excellence in the
Field of Environmental Technology Research. The spin-off has
patents on the carbon nanotube-based technology, based
on research initially funded by local pre-seed investment and
commercialisation support from PowerHouse.
There’s a substantial lineage developing in moving fundamental
materials research in the energy conversion and
storage area into the commercial arena, and on-going research
indicates that there’s a lot more to come.
Excellent research Excellent research Excellent research
by Vicki Hyde
by Vicki Hyde
The MacDiarmid Institute Principal Investigator and Professor
of Chemistry is investigating the fabrication of practical
molecular materials.
“The idea is that, in the future, various functions could be
provided by a single molecule.”
Working from the molecule up is a far cry from the more
usual top-down approach of the current silicon-based technology,
and comes with a whole host of new challenges. You
have to understand the properties of the nanoparticles, identify
what suitable surfaces allow retention of the desired properties,
and how to connect the two. Downard’s research group has
been focusing on identifying the best surfaces to work with
at the sub-nano-metre level. Until now, they have worked on
contributing to the basic understanding of how the structure
of layers on a surface affects the methods for patterning the
tethers.
“I welcome the opportunity to take our knowledge and
move it in a more practical direction.”
If these molecules are going to have practical applications,
they have to be attached to a surface to enable their
position and use to be precisely controlled. One of the biggest
challenges at present is determining whether such placement
techniques are successful. When you’re working at levels under
the one-nanometre mark, it’s not easy to see whether you’ve

12 INTERFACE August 2012
Excellent research Excellent research Excellent research
got a single molecule set in position or a clump.
The new research has meant working across a range of disciplines
and accessing expertise and instrumentation from people
and places up and down the country. Downard and her group
have been working with physicist and Principal Investigator Dr
Simon Brown and MacDiarmid Institute postdoctoral fellow
Dr Haifeng Ma on the scanning tunnelling microscopy needed
to see down to single-molecule resolution. “They may speak
different scientific languages,” says Downard, “but they’re
strongly motivated to try to bring that knowledge together. It’s
contributing to an emerging pan-institute interest in molecular
electronics.”
The work is very recent, having begun this year, and
Downard admits it is a very long-term project – “it may be
decades before we ever see anything practical out of this”. But
she’s also quick to note that you need such aspirational projects
to run alongside the more commercially focused, short-term
work, adding that seeing some of her research move in a more
applied direction has been “particularly exciting”.
One of her current projects, in conjunction with Principal
Investigators Simon Hall and Richard Tilley, has a two-year
timeframe, with two MacDiarmid Institute postdoctoral fellows,
Drs Paula Brooksby and Eric Njagi, engaged in research relevant
to energy conversion and storage. The goal is to have work with
definite commercial potential that can be protected by intellectual
property agreements. Hall, with two successful spin-offs under his
belt, brings some “real marketplace knowledge” to the research.
A MacDiarmid Institute Commercialisation Fellowship has gone
to PhD student Andrew Gross to investigate other commercial
possibilities within Downard’s research group.
“We have a mix of things going on in my group,” Downard
says. “You do have to aim for the long term, but you also
need shorter term goals, and they bring a different kind of
satisfaction.”
Experimenting with Theory—
Rare Earth Nitrides by Sarah Wilcox
Dr Ben Ruck and Professor Joe Trodahl were already
working on metallic nitrides when they came across
a paper predicting that related compounds—the
rare earth nitrides—would not only have interesting
electronic properties, but magnetic properties as well.
“That gave us the impetus to start making and measuring
them. Our first and perhaps our most significant breakthrough
was proving that, at low temperature, gadolinium nitride is
both a semi-conductor and a magnet at the same time,” says
Ben.
The group grows thin films (100–200 nm) of the nitrides on
a support under ultra-high vacuum. Analysis of the magnetic,
physical and electronic properties
of the material follows, using
various spectroscopic and cryogenic
techniques overseas, and more
recently synchrotrons. Changing the
ratios of the metal and nitrogen, as
well as mixing and putting layers
of different metallic nitrides next
to each other, subtly changes the
properties of the material. The
challenge is to work out why and
how.
“We’ve spent a lot of time
working with theorists,” says Ben,
“taking their calculations and using
them to suggest experiments, then
using our experiments to help refine
their calculations. Some key collaborations
with several overseas groups
have been established.”
The new materials may be useful in the development of
technologies such as MRAM (magnetic RAM) that uses electron
spin, not charge, to store data. Because data is retained when
the power is switched off, a device can be faster, more versatile
and use less energy.
“MacDiarmid Institute funding got this research area kicked
off in the first place and has supported it all the way with
equipment for making and analysing our compounds. The new
vacuum system, for example, enables us to make one sample a
day rather than one a week, so progress is much faster.
“The team’s latest work with europium nitride has received
significant worldwide attention. The material is not usually
magnetic, but has been ‘tricked’ into behaving like a magnet
by being produced with slightly too few nitrogen atoms.
“Now we have to propose some theory to work out why.
New results are fantastic, but understanding them is the best.”
Rare Earth Nitrides group from left: Harry Warring, Muhammad Azeem, Tanmay Maity, Dr Simon Granville,
Dr Ben Ruck, Dr Franck Natali, Do Le Binh, Dr Eva Anton, Luis Figueras, James McNulty

MACDIARMID INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY 13
Excellent research Excellent research Excellent research
Still Fun After All These Years
by Vicki Hyde
For MacDiarmid Institute Principal Investigator David
Williams, twenty years of taking his lab-based research to the
market in various forms hasn’t dimmed the excitement of
being a part of such development.
“Good science leads to good technology, and if you’ve got
good technology you can commercialise it,” he says. “It’s great.”
It’s a familiar area for the Auckland University Professor
of Electrochemistry. Williams has worked on a number of
spin-offs from his research, in New Zealand and overseas.
Lab research led to a line of gas sensors that ended up with
a million products a year being manufactured by Capteur
Above (clockwise from top):
Karthik Kannappan, Raoul Peltier,
David Williams, Bhuvana Kannan and
Yiwen Pei.
Left: A row of sensors installed
and photographed by
Dr Mark Bart of Aeroqual
Sensors, a VC-funded startup in the UK. Instruments used
to measure air quality came out of research into the characteristics
of semi-conducting oxides, taking just 18 months to
go commercial. The Auckland-based company established to
market those, Aeroqual, has seen a “spectacular” growth rate
of 30% per annum, recently reaching $4-5 million in annual
sales.
In the UK, Williams was working in the diagnostic test area
with a company that had its origins in blood glucose measurement
devices. Instead of a start-up, the new business that
it spawned began with the purchase of another company
which made home pregnancy tests. That, says Williams, gave
him experience of working in a rapidly growing, acquisitive
corporation.
Like many Kiwis, Williams eventually wanted to come
home, willing to swap the overseas opportunities for a more
relaxed lifestyle. What both startled and delighted him was the
discovery that New Zealand wasn’t the sleepy back-water as
so often portrayed, but a place where “really neat stuff” was
happening in the science arena.
“It was a real eye-opener to see the quality and quantity and
range of wonderful science going on here.”
And while being at the bottom of the world does sometimes
necessitate lengthy plane trips, the international network and
collaborations didn’t stop.
Williams maintains significant collaborations abroad. He is
a Principal Investigator and
Adjunct Professor at the
Dublin-based Biomedical
Diagnostics Institute; has
been a visiting Professor at
the University of Toronto
and University College
London; and an Honorary Professor of the Royal Institution
of Great Britain. He has worked on corrosion science at the
Australian Synchrotron with Bridget Ingham, collaborated on
smart surface developments and nanoparticle synthesis with
MacDiarmid Institute researchers in Auckland, Wellington
and Christchurch; and is looking at laser manufacturing with
Cather Simpson at Auckland University.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on. People are happy to use
whatever expertise I have to offer.”
Williams credits the MacDiarmid Institute with helping to
strengthen ties between researchers, institutions and industry,
a key factor in success, from networking to funding to
equipment provision, right through to business development.
“If you’ve got a sufficiently extensive network, someone’s
got something going on. There’s always some piece of kit you
can use somewhere else. Somewhere there’s a smart person
doing something interesting.”
He also cites the “terrific entrepreneurial culture” at
Auckland University as inspirational, from the energy provided
by the students to the strong support from Auckland
Uniservices and relationships with organisation like business
growth centre, IceHouse. “It’s the best I’ve seen anywhere.”
Back in 2006, when Williams swapped the UK for New
Zealand, he says that he thought to himself “’I can really have
some fun here’…and that’s proved true”.

14 INTERFACE August 2012
Excellent research Excellent research Excellent research
Raman Spectroscopy
by Sarah Wilcox
Being able to detect a Raman signal from a
single molecule illuminated with laser light
has exciting applications in new materials
research and analytical chemistry. However,
the team that developed the technique is
also using it to find out more about the
molecules themselves.
Improving the sensitivity of the detecting technique is a key
issue because Raman signals are very weak. Surface-enhanced
Raman spectroscopy (SERS) offers a million-fold improvement
in sensitivity over standard Raman spectroscopy. In 2006, the
group developed a reliable method to study the conditions
under which single molecule detection is possible with SERS,
thereby effectively ending a debate that has been going on for
some years.
“We have chosen to focus our thinking and research on
developing the ideas and basic understanding around the
method itself, rather than pushing into resource-hungry applications
of the technique. It’s nice to see that other people are
now doing that, based on what we have achieved,” says Eric
Le Ru, the younger half of the Etchegoin/Le Ru ‘dynamic duo’.
The success of this approach is borne out not only by the
Associate Professor Eric Le Ru Professor Pablo Etchegoin
tally of 50–60 papers published by the group since 2006 but
also by the fact that one of Etchegoin’s and Le Ru’s papers
is currently the most cited research article in the Journal of
Physical Chemistry C.
Not all their samples are high-tech new materials. Eric recently
worked on a manuscript from the Alexander Turnbull Library
to identify a particular pigment that had been used. “Some of
these pigments have very characteristic Raman signals, so we
were able to put it under the laser and have a look, without
damaging the original work. From that you can piece together
information about when and where it may have been created.
“Our team is really lively and interactive. New ideas come
from our discussions every day and we just run with the most
exciting ones.”
From Competition to Collaboration by Sarah Wilcox
In the mind of former MacDiarmid Institute Director,
Richard Blaikie, the beginnings of the MacDiarmid
Institute will always be framed in time by a world-changing
event that took place on the other side of the globe.
When the call came ten years ago for expressions of interest
to set up Centres of Research Excellence (CoRE), Richard was at
the University of Canterbury, as part of a team running nanoscience
and engineering programmes. They put their hands up to
start a materials science CoRE.
“I was in the US on study leave and was trying to get funding
for the new Institute via phone calls back to New Zealand.”, he
says. We were just upstarts really, with youth and beauty on our
Professor Richard Blaikie
side. We were up against a combined bid backed by Victoria
and Massey Universities, Industrial Research and others, but Paul
Callaghan eventually got everyone together to make a bid that
was ultimately successful. Our various activities have continued
to be complementary and, by working together across the
country, we get the benefits of being bigger than one university
department. Paul was of course a brilliant, visionary leader and I
was happy to step in as deputy.”
Richard took over from Paul as Director in 2008 and has now
handed over to a new leadership team.
“Looking back, the thing I am most proud of is our phenomenal
publication rate—our 1000 th paper has just been published.
Right from the start, we requested that all research publications
mention the MacDiarmid Institute in the address line, as well
as a research group name, and this turned out to make it really
easy to keep track of the outputs. It’s also gratifying to see that,
collectively, our work has been cited over 10,000 times now.
But producing quality research was not the only challenge
relished by Richard Blaikie. He also recognised that educating
smart physical scientists and engineers was essential for the
future of New Zealand.
“Our alumni are our most important product. What they go
on to do is really the hallmark of our success. Not all of today’s
graduates will be able to follow the same academic career path
as me, but we need many of them to become successful entrepreneurs
and build businesses to grow our country’s prosperity.
My message to them has to be ‘New Zealand needs you’.”

MACDIARMID INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY 15
Brooker’s Bunch by Vicki Hyde
It may be 25 years since Sally Brooker received her
BSc(Hons) First Class from Canterbury University, but
she hasn’t lost her connection to students.
The MacDiarmid Institute Principal Investigator and Professor
of Chemistry at Otago University maintains a strong research
group of Honours students, PhD students and postdoctoral
fellows, fondly referred to as “Brooker’s Bunch”.
“Working with my team is the highlight of my working
day. A large chunk of my enjoyment is from the interaction
in the day-to-day basics,” Brooker maintains. This can vary
from discussing the direction of doctoral research, advising on
funding applications, preparing the many joint publications
that come out of the group, or simply shooting the breeze
over a cup of coffee. Brooker has deliberately kept her group
numbers at 8-10 to ensure that she maintains quality time with
each member of the team.
Four MacDiarmid Institute-funded PhD
students and postdoctoral fellows have
come through the team and, like their
50-odd counterparts, are now scattered
throughout the world at leading research
institutions and universities in Ireland,
Switzerland, England, China and Germany,
as well as around New Zealand.
Brooker credits a strong network of
international contacts with providing
her bunch with broad opportunities. She
travels to overseas conferences and institutions
regularly, encouraging high-level
CONTACTS.
researchers to visit New Zealand.
The 2012 International Symposium
on Macrocyclic and Supramolecular
Chemistry conference Brooker
hosted here earlier this year saw her
encourage contacts between students
and international researchers.
“Those personal contacts are very
important and [such connections] are
very common - the world is a very
small place!”
BROOKER IS KEEN TO SEE
THE LIKES OF KITCHEN AND
OTHER TALENTED EX-PATS
RETURN HOME, BRINGING
WITH THEM A BROADER
DEPTH OF UNDERSTANDING
AND THEIR OWN NETWORKS
OF COLLABORATORS AND
of Kitchen and other talented ex-pats return home, bringing
with them a broader depth of understanding and their own
networks of collaborators and contacts. She knows that limited
research job opportunities can make that difficult, with many
Kiwis remaining overseas permanently, but is pleased to see that
the emphasis on analytical thinking, problem solving and clear
communications drummed into students is recognised and valued
as much outside the lab as in. Hence, graduates are readily able
to take up a non-research career path, opting for patent law,
consulting or teaching in New Zealand.
“Part of the New Zealand thing is you need to have a fairly
open mind about what you do next.”
Brooker is keen to do as Sir Paul Callaghan encouraged - to
refund, and more, the grants awarded over the years through the
successful commercialisation of research. She recognises that this
requires increased awareness of intellectual property issues and
commercial drivers. However, Brooker remains
a tad wary of the push towards commercialisation,
aware that overemphasis on this could
harm student prospects. With a low probability
of commercial success and a strong tendency
to discourage publication due to the possibility
of commercial sensitivity, a student caught
between commercial failure and no academic
publications to their name would be in a very
tight spot when it comes to progressing to
the next step in their career. And that’s not
something she’d wish on any Brooker’s Bunch
graduate.
As a result, one of her bunch,
Bright Futures PhD student-MacDiarmid
Institute postdoctoral fellow
Jonathan Kitchen, headed off to
Trinity College Dublin to work with
Professor Thorri Gunnlaugsson. She
describes Kitchen as “one of the
superstars that has come out of my
team”, a postdoctoral fellow with
17 papers so far from his time in
Brookers Bunch.
While acknowledging the importance
of international research experience,
Brooker is keen to see the likes
Brooker’s Bunch
Front row from left: Alain Valery, Raf Kulmaczewski , Rajni Wilson;
Back rows from left: Reece Miller, Ross Hogue, Scott Cameron, Humphrey Feltham,
Sebastien Dhers, Michael Bennington, Professor Sally Brooker

16 INTERFACE August 2012
The Buzz of Business by Vicki Hyde
Eight years ago, PhD student Sam Yu was inspired
by a seminar on entrepreneurship organised by Bill
Swallow as part of the Growth Industry Pilot Initiative
to build enterprise culture in Lincoln University and
the University of Canterbury.
“It really made me feel passionate about doing the hands-on
aspects of science,” Yu recalls.
This year, Dr Yu is in front of the audience talking about his
experience in both science and sales in a presentation at the
BIC-MacDiarmid Institute Innovation Workshop, organised by
Dr Simon Brown.
Yu undertook his PhD in nanotechnology with Professor
Alison Downard at Canterbury University, but wanted to look
further afield than the lab. “I always thought about doing
something other than research,” he admits. “I wanted to take
a different path to the usual post-doc.”
Yu’s path took him into Canterbury’s Science and
Entrepreneurship Course and on to papers for a Graduate
Diploma in Management. In 2009, when technology company
Izon Sciences Ltd looked to establish its headquarters in
Christchurch, Yu jumped at the chance to join them and is
now Izon’s Research and Business Development Manager for
the Asia-Pacific region., Despite the long hours and punishing
international travel schedule – 33 weeks away from home each
year have only recently dropped back to a more manageable
22 – it’s a job he clearly loves.
That workload has played
a large part in the company’s
successful development of an
international client base in 31
countries, including top-ranking
organisations such as Harvard,
MIT and the US National
Cancer Institute. Although Yu
initially joined the company as a
scientist, his role has expanded
along with the scientific
applications of nanotechnology.
Identifying likely markets,
making commercial connections
and keeping an eye on
the underlying research all
come under his watch. He cites
multi-tasking, enthusiasm and
determination as skills vital to an
entrepreneur. Problem-solving is
also high on his list – if you can’t
make a product or service that
is faster, better or more costeffective
than your competitors,
then you can’t succeed.
“There are many things we
can do, but you are only paid for
products and services that can
solve a problem.”
“I GET A BUZZ FROM THE
CUSTOMERS,” SAYS SAM YU.
HE CITES THE SATISFACTION
TO BE GAINED FROM
DEVELOPING A DIAGNOSTIC
TOOL, FOR EXAMPLE, FOR
EARLY DETECTION OF
CANCERS. WHO WOULDN’T
GET A BUZZ FROM THAT?
Sometimes that success comes through following diverse
directions, or a simple “suck it and see” approach. Izon’s very
successful nanopore technology was developed through an
unlikely sounding source - a flexible plastic used to produce
foldable kayaks. An early focus was on DNA sequencing, but
difficulty in getting a consistent pore size led to investigations
shifting from the nano region to include micropore applications,
opening up the potential for working with drugs, vaccines and
viruses, bacteria and blood products. After much testing and
many prototypes, a product range was officially launched in April
2010, supported by back-office software/hardware engineers,
administration and support staff and researchers.
Yu has found his research background a door-opener for
making connections with the science-oriented companies and
organisations with which he works. “They don’t necessarily react
well to conventional sales and marketing approaches, but with
science there’s a lot of connection and understanding.”
Scientific collaborations and networks provide an entry, which
makes things easier when you’re from an unknown company
in a country at the bottom of the world. Yu has seen a lot of
networking spin out of universities and institutions like the
MacDiarmid Institute. Cross-disciplinary growth has helped as
well. As a chemist, he looks at blood components in a totally
different way to biologists, and out of that can come a broader
understanding of research directions, instrumentation applications,
and commercial potential.

MACDIARMID INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY 17
The MacDiarmid Impact by Shaun Hendy
Sometime this year, the MacDiarmid Institute’s 1000th paper
will be indexed by the Web of Science, the leading database
of the world’s scientific papers. In the decade since the
MacDiarmid Institute was founded, the Web of Science shows
that it has produced about 1.5% of New Zealand’s scientific
articles. This is an impressive contribution and shows what
an important role the MacDiarmid Institute now plays in New
Zealand science.
It is these papers that give us our international profile. The
database shows that these papers have been cited by other
articles more than 10000 times - on average this is more than
ten citations per paper. It is nice to know that people are using
our work. However, like wealth, citations are not distributed
evenly so it is always interesting to look at which articles are
being cited the most.
The most cited paper authored by an MacDiarmid Institute
investigator appeared in Nature Materials in 2008. This was a
paper produced by an international collaboration that included
our own Professor Pablo Etchegoin from Victoria University of
Wellington. It described the effect of controlling the microstructure
of plastic solar cells to optimise their performance. It
has been now been cited more than 400 times. This is not just
good luck or a case of being in the right place at the right time
– Professor Etchegoin’s name appears frequently on the list of
the MacDiarmid Institute’s most cited papers, especially for his
work on the detection of single molecules.
The MacDiarmid Institute’s next most cited paper reports on
research that was conducted entirely within the MacDiarmid
Institute. This is an article by Professor Richard Blaikie (Deputy
Director 2002-2008 and Director from 2008-2011) and David
Melville, his PhD student at the University of Canterbury. Their
paper reported their ground-breaking work in using near-field
lithography to make nanoscale silver gratings. Published in
2005, it has now been cited more than 200 times. Blaikie
and Melville made extensive use of the MacDiarmid Institute’s
nanofabrication capability for this work, so it is likely that
this paper would not have been published if the MacDiarmid
Institute did not exist.
How does the MacDiarmid Institute’s work stack up internationally?
We can get an insight into this by comparing the
number of times the MacDiarmid Institute has been cited with
leading overseas institutions that work in advanced materials
and nanotechnology. Figure 1 shows that the MacDiarmid
Institute stacks up extremely well by international standards,
holding its own against the highest ranked Australian and
Asian universities, and closing in on some of the world’s best,
such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA.
The MacDiarmid Institute’s scientific articles also provide an
insight into how we collaborate. When MacDiarmid Institute
members collaborate together they will more often than not
publish a paper together about their joint work. By looking at
papers that have been co-authored by MacDiarmid Institute
investigators we can build up a picture of collaboration.
Figure 2 shows some snapshots
of the collaboration networks
that we can see between
MacDiarmid Institute investigators.
The growth in collaborations
between investigators has
been striking!
What will the next ten years
hold?
Figure 1: The figure compares the
citation impact of the MacDiarmid
Institute with that of other prominent
international institutions that work
in advanced materials and nanotechnology.
The MacDiarmid Institute’s
impact has grown considerably and is
now closing in on that of MIT.
Figure 2: The diagrams show the
web of collaborations that have built
up over time between MacDiarmid
Institute investigators. Each red
dot is a scientist, while the lines
between them indicate a collaboration
that has been recorded in our
scientific papers. Collaborations
between investigators have grown
phenomenally!

18 INTERFACE August 2012
Portals into other worlds by Elizabeth Connor
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Hidden in six
locations around New Zealand are over twenty portals
into other worlds. Unlike Narnia or Middle Earth,
these worlds are real, although you would have to
shrink around a hundred million times to enter them.
At this scale, an orange would loom the size of a planet
and you could slip through its skin into a world of pulsing
molecules, strange creatures and unpredictable forces.
MacDiarmid Institute researchers use these portals to enter the
tiny worlds inside things, exploring, cataloguing and tweaking
the strange dance of atoms and molecules to create extraordinary
new materials.
Three years ago, I had the privilege of visiting these portals,
which are in fact scientific instruments. I was escorted,
wearing white booties, lab coat and shower cap, by their
proud guardians down winding stairs into underground vaults,
behind thick black curtains and into golden glowing rooms.
The instruments themselves looked deceptively unassuming,
but it is well known that portals are concealed in everyday
places such as telephone boxes and wardrobes. One instrument
looked like a hair-dryer, rigged up to a vacuum cleaner
pipe, attached to a carburettor with a tangle of pipes and
electrical wires all joined onto a jet engine. Other instruments
were neatly contained in boxes like microwaves. Some looked
like old-fashioned submarines with shiny metal vaults and
bolted round glass windows.
Others involved blue and red
lasers darting to and fro across
tables in dark rooms. Many
of them purred and
pulsed.
All these
instruments
had been
purchased
or
Dafnis Vargas
built with two injections of funding from the government’s
education budget. It was like rain after drought. The government
had not funded capital equipment for many years and,
without it, New Zealand scientists struggled to perform worldclass
research. Finally, the portals were opened and they could
now enter the world stage with confidence.
Ten million dollars may seem a lot but, compared to the
budgets of top overseas labs, it was a drop in the ocean. The
key to the MacDiarmid Institute strategy was an ethos of
openness and collaboration. They decided to locate equipment
where the expertise was and give all MacDiarmid Institute
researchers free access. Facilities ended up at Industrial
Research, Canterbury, Otago, Victoria, Massey and later at
Geological and Nuclear Sciences.
What began as a practical measure for making the most of
limited resources had a remarkable side effect, as founding
director Paul Callaghan explained: “The instruments became
nodal points for collaboration. In each case there were one
or two people looking after the equipment who became
experts. They had a brief of supporting the work of teams from
elsewhere and, as we moved around and used each other’s
equipment, new research relationships developed.”
Just as Paul described, I discovered thriving ecosystems of
researchers and students developing around the facilities. I
found that the equipment was improving the international
reputation of researchers, spurring collaborations both here
and overseas; attracting top-quality PhDs, postdoctoral
fellows and senior researchers; improving the success rate for
funding applications; helping start-up companies improve their
products and lifting the quality of research across the board.
Some of the most exciting collaborations have emerged at
the intersection of biology and nanotechnology, a rich and
relatively unexplored field. Understanding how the instruments
work, engineers and physicists are able to reveal information
that a biologist could never discover on their own. For
example, MacDiarmid Institute engineer Maan Alkaisi is using
the nanofabrication facility at Canterbury University to produce
three-dimensional replicas of living biological cells. It is usually
near-impossible to get a detailed picture of what’s going on
at the surface of a living cell. They are tiny, slippery and hard
to pin down and most microscopes either damage or kill
them. Maan’s group is working in collaboration with medical
researcher John Evans
using a nano-imprint
machine, which takes
miniature “plastercasts”
of cells giving
snapshots of
processes such as
hormones travelling
in and out.
At Massey
University, physicist
Bill Williams is using
optical tweezers to
reveal the mechanics

MACDIARMID INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NANOTECHNOLOGY 19
of biological systems. This fascinating device, purchased in 2008,
uses tightly-focused lasers to pick up tiny objects and move them
around. It gives you such a direct appreciation of the forces at
work in the microscopic world that you feel like you’ve eaten
a “shrink me” pill and popped yourself in there. You can, for
example, grab the ends of a DNA molecule and pull them apart;
measuring the force it takes to unravel. Bill is collaborating with
Canterbury University biologist Juliet Gerrard to unravel the
molecular machinery inside living cells. The tweezers can also be
used to pick up emulsions, the tiny drops of oil and water found
in foods like chocolate and mayonnaise. This forms the basis of
the collaboration between MacDiarmid Institute Director Kate
McGrath and the Riddet Institute for food science and nutrition.
Once you understand how biological systems work you can
start to imitate them. Several exciting biomimicry projects have
sprung up within the MacDiarmid Institute, in particular around
the Electron Microscope Facility at Victoria University. These
microscopes take extremely high-resolution images of materials
almost to the level of single atoms. Auckland-based Principal
Investigator David Williams is using them in collaboration with
the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Biodiscovery to understand and
imitate the way nature builds materials like seashells, bone
and teeth. These incredibly light and strong materials assemble
themselves from common minerals using virtually no energy and
producing no waste. If we could imitate their construction, it
could solve a host of problems.
New Zealand has long been famed for its innovative use of
tools. What more is the number 8 fencing wire legend than an
example of using the tools at hand to solve new problems? Paul
Callaghan’s own field of research came about this way. After
returning home from completing his PhD in Physics at Cambridge
University he found himself in a chemistry department. In
order to do experimental physics he had to innovate with the
equipment at hand. This turned out to be a nuclear magnetic
resonance (NMR) spectrometer that one of his colleagues let him
share. By applying his physics knowledge to the spectrometer, he
developed a new tool for measuring the movement of molecules
inside a material. This was his first major breakthrough and
opened up a completely new field of Rheo-NMR, for which he
soon became famous. Paul’s company Magritek is centred on a
portable NMR tool, which his team developed by simplifying and
improving existing technology. This story illustrates a formula for
success in New Zealand: take an old tool, apply it to a new field,
invent a cheaper more effective version and sell it to the world.
A similar formula has been followed by IZON, the Christchurchbased
company that sells instruments for measuring nanoparticle
size. Both IZON and Magritek use the MacDiarmid Institutefunded
equipment to test and improve their products.
When Paul first used an NMR spectrometer it wasn’t the applications
that interested him. “I did it because I had a tool,” he
said, “a window that allowed me to see a whole lot of complexity
and dynamics at a molecular level that was otherwise not
accessible.” It is the thrill of discovery that propels many researchers
through the portals into the unknown. And yet, from these
strange compelling worlds at the frontiers of human knowledge,
the seeds of our future are found.
Cultivating NZ’s Talent Since 2005 by Elf Eldridge
As a CoRE, one of the MacDiarmid Institute’s goals
has always been the development and promotion of
its talented students. Recently, this has gained much
wider attention through the creation of MESA, the
MacDiarmid Emerging Scientists Association at the end
of 2010. However, the MacDiarmid Institute’s commitment
to its students stretches right back to its inception
in 2005.
One of the MacDiarmid Institute’s earliest PhD students was
Dr. Timothy Drysdale, currently leader of the Electromagnetics
design group at the University of Glasgow, who studied under
Professor Richard Blaikie at the University of Canterbury in 2005.
Timothy fondly remembers participating in the MacDiarmid
outreach programmes with local schools and assisting with
the early AMN conferences as part of the development of
the MacDiarmid Institute ‘family’, though he freely admits he
couldn’t have dreamt where his MacDiarmid Institute journey
would ultimately lead him.
He’s not alone. MacDiarmid Institute students are exposed
to some of the rarest scientific opportunities available to PhD
students worldwide just by virtue of being associated with
the institute, opportunities which many students cite as being
crucial steps on their respective pathways to success.
Dr. Reuben Mendelsberg and Dr. Shelley Scott are two further
MacDiarmid Institute success stories. Both currently pursuing
science research careers with prestigious American institu-
Electrochemistry bootcamp
tions (the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory and Professor Max Lagally’s materials science group
at the University of Wisconsin respectively), Mendelsberg and
Scott each regard the opportunities offered to them through the
MacDiarmid Institute community as life-changing points in their
careers. Dr. Mendelsberg was selected as one of the first two
students to participate in the IBM visiting scholar’s programme
in 2008 and Dr. Scott was one of the 2005 MacDiarmid Young
Scientists Awards recipients as well as being selected by the
Royal Society to attend the 5th Nobel Prize Winners Meeting
in Lindau, Germany in 2005. Whilst both are undeniably

20 INTERFACE August 2012
brilliant young scientists in their own right, neither are convinced
they would have experienced such opportunities without the
MacDiarmid Institute’s guiding hand. More recently, the institute’s
influence can be seen in emerging scientists closer to home, the
likes of Dr. John Watt, not only claiming the Prime Minister’s
Emerging Scientist prize and MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the
Year award in 2009 but also taking the leap into science communication
by hosting TVNZ7’s “Ever Wondered” science series.
Since the creation of MESA, this effect seems to have
resonated within the student body itself, enabling both its
members and the organising committee to achieve some truly
remarkable milestones in less than two years. The motivation
of the committee has lead MESA to collate a vast array of
resources on their website, www.mesa.ac.nz, on everything from
programming languages to outreach experiments and technical
workshops.
Possibly the most remarkable effect from MESA has been
to provide a voice for graduate science students amongst the
wider science and business communities, both in New Zealand
and abroad. MacDiarmid Institute students have been frequent
attendees at international ‘future-focused’ conferences for a
number of years, such as the Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science’s ‘Hope’ conference that bring together students from
across the Asia-Pacific region to promote collaboration and allow
students to discuss wider scientific issues with Nobel laureates.
Closer to home, the MESA effect is becoming more pronounced,
with the MESA chair featuring as a main speaker at the 2012
NZAS conference in Wellington and student Riyad Mucadam
attending the Transit of Venus conference to discuss science’s
future in New Zealand with Iwi, politicians and other stakeholders,
motivated students have more opportunities than ever before to
exert some direct influence on the future of NZ science.
The individual impact of these possibilities is best summed up by
two of MESA’s current organising committee members: the current
chairperson, Cosmin Laslau and the CEO of the student industry
engagement group, Chiasma WGTN, Ben Mallet. For Cosmin “...
MESA’s biggest benefit was helping expand my networks beyond
just those researchers working in my particular sub-field of chemistry
- essentially MESA helped engage me with NZ’s broader science
community, something I’ve really enjoyed and found very rewarding.”
Cosmin has just received the 2012 SPARK Chiasma prize, for his
role in the spin-off company, PicoIon, based around technology
Cosmin developed during the course of his PhD research. Following
up on suggestions from the NZAS conference, Cosmin and other
MacDiarmid Institute students have also set up Kaiarahi, a mentoring
organisation that matches students with non-academic mentors to
encourage them to think ‘beyond science’.
Ben Mallet’s emergence from the veil of ‘just another PhD student’
has been similarly understated and meteoric all at once: “I didn’t
know when joining the MESA committee that it would give me the
confidence to take a proactive approach to my own post-PhD future
and with the vital help of my amazing MESA committee comrades, a
leadership role on the future PhDs in NZ... And the future’s looking all
the more rosy for it.”
Profiling these students shows career trajectories that span the
globe from Wellington to Glasgow, but the unifying theme appears
to be one of students uncovering their own potential and it leading
them to places they had never dreamed of. So, with so much
emerging from such humble origins, one cannot help but wonder,
what’s next for the MacDiarmid Institute’s young emerging scientists?