Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, has appointed scientist Pablo Etchegoin as its first professor of nanotechnology, effective July 1. Etchegoin, currently an associate professor in the School of Chemical & Physical Sciences and a principal investigator in the school's MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials & Nanotechnology, joined Victoria in 2003. His research areas include optical methods for detecting small quantities of molecules and the study of single molecules by laser spectroscopy. He is also interested in the use of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) in biological applications. Etchegoin has research ties with the physics department (Blackett Laboratory) and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London, as well as with the National Physical Laboratory in Britain.