Displaying items by tag: Chile

Sharon and I were lucky to have Angélica Casanova-Katny travel from Concepción to visit us, Gustavo and his research group at USACH on Tuesday and Wednesday. Both of us, Marisol and Rodrigo gave research talks during which Angélica contributed some interesting comparisons with her expertise on Antarctic plants on King George Island.

Sharon and Mel joined Gustavo and his wife on Saturday 7th November for a road trip heading east from Santiago - the Andes. We first practised our metro and navigation skills to meet our lovely hosts at Estacion Los Dominicos. We drove from here along the Rio Maipo into the Andes on a road called Camino al volcan (road to the volcano).

Last week Melinda got the Examination reports for her PhD. With a lot of quick action on the part of the Graduate School, Mel was able to respond to the comments in record time. On Thursday she was able to submit her corrected thesis and that meant that on Friday she officially received notification that she has met all the requirements for her PhD and she will be able to graduate at the next ceremony  in April. So a big congratulations to Dr Melinda Waterman on this achievement and also a big thank you to everyone in Graduate School at UOW for making it happen so fast.  The reason there was a rush is that Mel had to be awarded her PhD in order to start her Endeavour Fellowship in Santiago, Chile.  

On the morning of our second day in Santiago (5th November) we were kindly escorted to the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH) by Marisol. Upon arrival, we were greeted by Gustavo and attended a final examination seminar (en espanol) by one of Gustavo’s research undergraduate students, 'little' Rodrigo. Sharon and I were quite proud of how much we understood of his interesting seminar on the salt stress on an Antarctic grass, Deschampsia antarctica.

On November 4th, Melinda and Sharon flew to Chile to work with colleagues at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH).  We are being hosted by Dr Dr. Gustavo E. Zúñiga, Dean of the Faculty. Melinda will be working in the Laboratorio de Fisiología y Biotecnología Vegetal (Plant Physiology and Biotechnology Lab) until February. We worked with Gustavo, Marisol, Tavo and Hans from this group last year in Antarctica.  They have been looking after the samples of moss we collected there and Melinda will be extracting compounds from them while she is here.  

I am at the Annual meeting of the Chilean Biological Society in Puerto Varas in the very beautiful Lake District region of Chile.  Yesterday I participated in a symposium on Antarctic flora organized by Dr Angelica Casonova-Katny, Universidad de Concepcion, and Professor Gustavo Zuniga, Universidad de Santiago de Chile.