SCIENCE PROFILE
A dream job “
L
anding the position of New Zealand Winegrowers’ Research Programme Manager is the dream job for Matias Kinzurik, as Tessa Nicholson discovered. “I have always wanted to work in an industry that is keen on using science to strive ahead, to fix its problems and beat its challenges.” Kinzurik has no hesitation in stating the above as his reasons for applying for the job at NZW. The former Argentinian who studied in his home country, Houston -Texas and New Zealand says it is a rare thing for any industry to have a wide vision of using science to move forward on a wholesale scale. But NZW does just that. With science in his blood,
I wanted to invent this revolutionary biotech idea that was going to fix everything, create world peace and all that. Well that was my vision at the time, at least.
(both his parents are chemists) Kinzurik decided to take a step sideways and concentrate on molecular biology and biotechnology. His early goals were quite simple. “I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was 25,” he jokes. “I wanted to invent this revolutionary biotech idea that was going to fix everything, create world peace and all that. Well that was
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my vision at the time, at least.” He did however help create a start-up idea, that unfortunately didn’t quite enthuse potential investors as much as it enthused himself. “My friend and I had this idea that we were going to make biofuel by using a local species of microalgae. It was a great idea and everyone loved it, except the year we put this into action was 2007
– the year of the crash. When we were coming up with the idea, the cost of a barrel of oil was $140. By the time we finished putting together the idea, it had collapsed to almost $35. There was no way it was going to make it then.” He therefore decided that maybe he should concentrate on his scientific career before he started hitting up investors with new ideas again. So he headed to Houston to do his Masters in yeast genetics. “I saw it as a really wide opportunity. There is so much you can do by manipulating yeast genetics. Wine is one of them. My main drive was to use yeast genetics to create value in something that was already valuable. And wine is a valuable and established product.” With his Masters under his
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NZ WINEGROWER DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018