$5.4m Marsden funding boost for Massey researchers
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
$5.4m Marsden
funding boost for Massey researchers
Eleven research projects led by Massey staff have been awarded a total of $5.4m in funding over the next three years from the Marsden Fund administered by the Royal Society.
The society today announced $54m in total funding for leading-edge research projects in the sciences, engineering, maths and information sciences, social sciences and humanities, mostly to universities but also to crown research institutes.
Massey was awarded seven Marsden Grants and four Fast Start grants, which are designed to support outstanding researchers early in their careers.
Marsden Fund Council chairman Dr Garth Carnaby says the funded projects have been thoroughly reviewed internationally and are of excellent quality.
“The fund sits at the discovery end of New Zealand’s research spectrum, allowing our best researchers freedom to explore their own ideas,” Dr Carnaby says. “It represents a government investment in the creation of cutting edge knowledge through scholarly research.”
Last year, the University received eight new research projects led by University staff and four Fast Start projects for emerging researchers, with funding totalling $5.86m over three years.
Acting Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Warrington says Marsden grants are awarded in a highly-competitive environment and those receiving these prestigious awards can be very proud of their achievements.
"The significant number of grants awarded both to established and to new staff at Massey reflects very well on the continued high standards of research being undertaken at the University."
Marsden grants:
Professor Nigel French, Institute of
Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, receives
$740,000 for a project entitled Cows, Starlings and
Campylobacter in New Zealand: unifying phylogeny and
epidemiology to gain insight into pathogen
evolution.
The introduction of European wildlife and
livestock into New Zealand has provided us with a unique
opportunity to study the evolution of a globally important
human pathogen: Campylobacter jejuni. Using analytical tools
developed by our research team and detailed laboratory
studies including whole genome sequencing, we aim to exploit
the newly-discovered host specificity of C. jejuni strains
and the historical separation of both host and bacterial
populations, to improve our understanding of C. jejuni
evolution. Ultimately we can learn why C. jejuni emerged to
become such a prominent pathogen, anticipate further
evolution and restrict emergence and spread of new
strains.
Professor Paul Rainey, Institute of
Molecular Biosciences, receives $880,000 for The
evolution of multicellularity.
The origin of
multicellularity is one of the most perplexing and exciting
problems in biology. Recent empirical work has led to
recognition of shortcomings with existing theory. Together
the applicants have formulated a radically new theory which
shows that tension among levels of selection can fuel
(rather than impede) transitions in individuality. A key
realisation is that the fitness of higher and lower levels
is intimately linked so that cells at each level can be
considered different stages of a life cycle. This proposal
seeks to extend recent theory, test key predictions and
experimentally recreate an evolutionary
transition.
Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger,
Institute of Fundamental Sciences, receive $740,000 for the
project The variation of fundamental constants in
space-time.
Fundamental constants like the speed of
light, Planck constant or gravitational constant play
defining roles in physics and chemistry. Modern theories
attempting to unify all four fundamental forces of nature
suggest that all fundamental constants may vary in space and
time. The search for such small variations currently
constitutes one of the most exciting areas of physics. For
further progress in this area it is important to find
enhanced effects of the variation of fundamental constants.
We therefore want to find suitable molecules, perform
calculations and stimulate new searches of the variation
effects both in cosmic and laboratory molecular
spectra.
Professor Martin Hazelton, Institute of
Fundamental Sciences, receives $310,000 for his project
New tools for statistical inference for network-based
transportation models.
Network-based models of road
traffic systems underpin a vast array of transport
management and planning activities. In practice they must be
calibrated for the traffic system under consideration,
giving rise to a wide range of statistical inference
problems. The most readily available type of data for
fitting transport models comprises traffic counts on a set
of network links. However, these do not uniquely determine
the route flows, leading to a statistical linear inverse
problem structure. By focusing on this common structure, our
aim is to develop improved tools for inference with wide
applicability in transportation science.
Dr Carlo
Laing, Institute of Information and Mathematical
Sciences, receives $454,000 for his study into Complexity
reduction in neural models.
Recent advances have led
to increasingly detailed models of neuronal networks. These
models are time-consuming to simulate, and understanding
their "essence" is difficult.
Recently-developed
"equation-free" (EF) methods enable
one to analyse and efficiently simulate complex, multi-scale
systems. We aim to use EF methods to analyse several neural
models, including the complex respiratory neural network.
The techniques involved include identification of
low-dimensional variable(s) which describe the macroscopic
dynamics of the network, and bifurcation analysis in terms
of these variables. Our goal is to provide an understanding
of such networks that cannot be found in any other
way.
Professor Mick Roberts, Institute of
Information and Mathematical Sciences, receives $462,000 for
his project entitled Modelling a virus.
Viruses
multiply and evolve within their hosts. A virus is in
conflict with its host's immune system. Transmission of a
virus to a new host, even one of the same species,
introduces it to a different environment and different
selection pressures. Transmission of a virus between hosts
of different species may result in unexpected consequences
for host or virus. Mathematical models will describe the
within-host evolution and between-host transmission of a
virus. Thought experiments carried out on the models will
reveal how the virus's characteristics and environment
determine how it spreads. The results will be related to HIV
and influenza.
Professor Kerry Chamberlain, School
of Psychology, receive $645,000 for their study Social
meanings of medication.
Medications abound in
contemporary society, and many people believe there is 'a
pill for every ill'. This project explores the social
meanings of medications and their use within everyday life
in domestic settings. Specifically, we will sample three
types of households, those containing: younger children;
people with chronic illness; and users of alternative
medications. Information will be sought through interviews,
discussions, observations, diaries and photographic tasks,
and from the contents of first aid kits and medicine
cabinets. Our aims are to discern what medications are
present, their pathways through such households, their
symbolic meanings, and social practices involving their
use.
Fast Start grants:
Dr Wayne Patrick,
Institute of Molecular Biosciences, receives $300,000 for
his study Where do new enzymes come from.
All
species must adapt to survive in changing environments;
however, the molecular mechanisms that underlie adaptation
are poorly understood. My goal is to understand a key aspect
of adaptation: the origins and evolution of new enzymes.
Here, I propose to use the high-throughput tools of
functional genomics and in vitro evolution to observe the
emergence of hundreds of new enzymes in the model organism,
Escherichia coli. This work will provide unique genome- and
proteome-wide insights into the fundamental biological
processes of adaptive molecular evolution, as well as into
applied problems such as the evolution of antibiotic
resistance.
Dr Steffen Lippert, Department of
Commerce, receives $300,000 for Venture capitalists and
intellectual property.
Venture capitalists (VCs)
often finance early stage innovations that are too
preliminary for patent protection, and are kept secret
instead. This secrecy provides VCs with an information
advantage, inducing stronger incentives for them to invest
into innovations than for traditional players.
Therefore,
the common wisdom suggesting that better intellectual
property (IP) protection fosters innovation may be wrong,
implying that policy-making could benefit from economic
research on the link between IP protection and VC financing.
Hence, we propose to use economic modelling to investigate
this link and to test our predictions empirically, aiming at
sound theory-based policy recommendations for fostering
innovation.
Dr Leigh Signal, Sleep/Wake Research
Centre, receives $300,000 for Waking up can be hard to
do: unravelling the dynamics of sleep inertia.
How
the brain transitions in and out of sleep remains a
fundamental unsolved mystery of neurobiology. On awakening,
consciousness returns before full waking function. The poor
performance and grogginess experienced in this transitional
period is known as sleep inertia. Two studies will be
conducted that systematically manipulate the factors
affecting the magnitude and time course of sleep inertia
after short periods of sleep at different times of the day
and night. The proposed research will significantly advance
basic scientific understanding of dynamics of sleep inertia
and is directly relevant to the issue of workplace napping
in safety critical settings.
Dr Ingrid Horrocks,
Department of English and Media Studies, receives $220,000
for her study Reluctant wanderers: women re-imagine the
margins, 1775-1800.
This project will explore how and
why the figure of the female wanderer became important in
late eighteenth-century British literary culture. There is a
significant understudied corpus of literary texts from the
last three decades of the eighteenth-century that foreground
this figure. "Reluctant
Wanderers" will analyse the uses
to which the figure of the wanderer is put in texts by Mary
Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Frances Burney, Ann
Radcliffe and other women writers, critically examining
their content, context and formal attributes to reveal a
uniquely female contribution to wide-ranging debates about
the nature of sympathy, community and social
exclusion.
ENDS