Student showcase

Sonia Van de Sar

Sonia Van de Sar was selected as one of two New Zealand students to attend the 56th Meeting of Nobel Prize Winners in Lindau, Germany in June of this year. In this ,the 18th Forum dedicated to Chemistry just over 500 students from around the world were chosen to join 23 Nobel Laureates (the majority having won their prizes in chemistry, although a handful had been awarded them in the disciplines of physics or medicine and physiology) in a week long "meeting of the minds". During the week, in the beautiful town of Lindau, situated in the far south of Germany on Lake Constance, they listened to plenary lectures given by each Nobel Laureate in the mornings, and participated in interactive student-Laureate discussion sessions in the afternoons.

Sonia’s trip to Lindau was a fantastic experience. She was both challenged to think outside of the square of her own field of knowledge, not only in some of the plenary lectures, but also in discussions with other students, and also inspired, mostly by the realisation that Nobel Laureates are every-day people with every-day lives and that their achievements mostly come from hard work and perseverance.

She met so many new people, many from Germany, some of which became very good friends. This was also an excellent opportunity to practice her German which she has been learning for a couple of years.

While in Germany (and Switzerland) she also took the opportunity to visit the Universities in Bonn and also in Basel where I gave a seminar on my PhD work.

Since coming back from Germany Sonia has submitted her PhD thesis and is now waiting anxiously for her defence, which I will give at the end of November.

Early next year she plans to go to Germany again, this time to start a postdoctoral position at the University of Bonn. Until then however, she is working as a research assistant in the natural products chemistry group (University of Canterbury), in which she did her PhD.

Sonia’s PhD research was focussed on the isolation and structure determination of cytotoxic compounds isolated from fungi that could be used as lead structures in pharmaceutical drug design. The characterisation of a group of structurally unprecedented compounds also lead to an in depth investigation into the mechanism of their biosynthesis in the fungal producer. This side project was fascinating and has heightened her interest in this alternative area of natural products chemistry, and left her wanting more!; so it will provide her with a good base to begin her postdoctoral research which will use a combination of chemistry and molecular genetics to investigate the biosynthesis of selected pharmaceutically important metabolites isolated from marine sponges.