Speaker: Dr Barry Wong
Date: Thursday 27 August
Time: 6pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, EIT Taradale
Admission: Gold coin donation

Wine is a complicated product with many features and attributes. A simple stroll down the supermarket aisle reveals hundreds of wines on display – from strange bottle shapes to wine varieties that cannot be pronounced. Wine has been integral to many cultures and, for centuries, has accompanied the rise and fall of empires. In this presentation, Dr Barry Wong will discuss modern consumer attitudes and behaviour towards wine. How do we react to certain wines? Or why are we drawn to one particular wine and not the other? As part of the presentation, he will share some emerging trends in the research conducted by his masters students in Hawke’s Bay covering organic wine, no- and low-alcohol (NoLo) wine, and alternative wine packaging.

Dr Barry Wong has been a Postgraduate Lecturer in Wine Business at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) since 2023. Before moving to Hawke’s Bay, he completed a PhD in Sensory and Consumer Science at Auckland University of Technology.

His doctoral research explored New Zealand consumers’ sensory and flavour perception of Korean rice wine. Currently, his research focuses on consumer attitudes and behaviour towards food and beverages using a range of research methods.

Associate Prof Anna Garden and Associate Prof Erin Leitao
The MacDiarmid Institute
Date: Monday 7 September
Time: 6pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, EIT – Hawke’s Bay Campus
501 Gloucester St, Taradale, Napier
Free entry but please register to reserve your place

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Critical minerals – raw materials that are essential to many existing and future technologies – have been making headlines in recent times due to increasing supply chain vulnerabilities. In this talk speakers from The MacDiarmid Institute 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.

The MacDiarmid Institute is a network of leading researchers from around the country united in a common goal: to create and explore innovative, sustainable materials that will improve the lives of people in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world.

• Associate Prof Anna Garden, Associate Professor in Chemistry, University of Otago, and Principal Investigator and Deputy Director, 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 Prof Erin Leitao, 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.