Joe is currently half way through his honours year, which counts as the fourth year towards a Bachelor of Philosophy (Science) degree at ANU. Joe has done mostly chemistry and molecular biology throughout his undergraduate course (plus a little bit of neuroscience on the side), and is now doing his honours project in a protein chemistry lab in the Research School of Chemistry. Galen Correy is also doing his honours in the same lab. Joe's project is looking into the evolution of new enzymatic activity from non-catalytic proteins.

'We hope that by understanding how new enzyme activity emerges and evolves in nature it may provide some insight into how we can better design engineered enzymes for use in industry, medicine etc etc. The project is very interesting and I have been learning a lot of new skills this year which is nice, but is a little stressful.'

Jess Walch, 2013

Jess has contacted us to let us know about a fantastic volunteering program she discovered whilst travelling. It's a site called http://www.workaway.info/. It's basically a volunteer program where hosts from anywhere in the world can sign-up offering free food, accommodation, and integration into their lifestyle and country in exchange for a maximum of 5 hours work a day from you. To register as a 'workawayer' it costs 22 euros for two years, however you can browse all the possible hosts before you create an account. There are a wealth of opportunities! 

Some host examples include working on an alpaca farm in Estonia, on a yacht in Greece, a circus in Switzerland, a tea farm in Scotland and only recently (May) did I spend a month up in the forests of Sweden, 100km below the arctic circle, living with a small German family and working on a sled dog farm looking after 15 huskies. What an experience that was!! I also plan on heading to Morocco come August and working for a host involved with the 'education of deprived children'. And it's not just Europe! There are countless opportunities all over the world ('I'm thinking of applying to a hostel job in Panama or Costa Rica...'). 

'I recently spent three weeks with Lucy Owens (Old Scholar 2013) in Croatia too and she had plans to do a volunteer program in Morocco also. Except hers would have cost her $1700! We had a quick search on Workaway and now she is doing virtually the same program yet basically free.'