Victoria University scoops 12 Marsden grants

MEDIA RELEASE

25 October 2012

Victoria University scoops 12 Marsden grants

Victoria University researchers have scooped 12 prestigious Marsden grants, enabling them to progress their research in a wide range of areas.

The Marsden Fund supports research excellence, allowing New Zealand’s best researchers to explore ideas at the very forefront of their disciplines. Victoria researchers received 12 out of 86 grants funded nationwide, worth $6.75 million in total. The funding consists of eight standard grants and four Fast Start grants for emerging researchers.

Successful projects include research into the adaptability of corals to climate change, differing attitudes to blue- and white-collar offending, motivation and achievement in education and the way that changes in land ownership have shaped the histories of New Zealand and other Pacific countries, compared to the Americas.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Pat Walsh is delighted with the result. “The Marsden grant process is a highly competitive one, and the successful Victoria researchers should be very proud.

“The University prides itself on its ground-breaking and highly relevant research, research which creates new knowledge for the benefit of society.”

The Marsden grants were spread across six University faculties: with six for Science, two for Humanities and Social Sciences, and one each for Education, Engineering, Law and the Victoria Business School.

“It’s excellent to see the grants spread across six of our faculties, including eight schools and one research centre—showing the diversity and breadth of the research being carried out,” says Professor Walsh.

Victoria University recipients of Marsden grants (distributed over three years):

Associate Professor Jeff Shima, Winners and Losers: Effects of demographic heterogeneity on individual fitness and the dynamics of marine metapopulations, $920,000

Dr Simon Davy: The adaptability of corals to climate change: switching partners and the role of nutritional interactions in the coral-algal symbiosis, $920,000

Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt: Tracing the Evolution of Radio Halos and Relics with Next Generation Radio Telescopes, $870,000

Professor Lydia Wevers: The History of Reading in Colonial New Zealand and Australia, $445,000

Professor Richard Boast: The Tenurial Revolution in the Pacific and the Americas, $585,000

Professor Rod Downey: Algorithmic Randomness, Computation and Complexity, $510,000

Dr Richard Arnold, Cluster Analysis for Ordinal Categorical Data, $600,000

Professor Mengjie Zhang, Genetic Programming for Job Shop Scheduling, $520,000

Fast Start

Dr Nick Golledge: Will the East Antarctic ice-sheet contribute to global sea-level rise under warmer-world scenarios? $345,000

Dr Flaviu Hodis: Motivation and achievement: A study of complex relations, $345,000

Dr Lisa Marriott: The Colour of Crime: Investigation of attitudes towards blue- and white-collar offending, $345,000

Dr Jason Young, Investing in Rural China: New Zealand Agribusiness and the Local Global Nexus, $345,000

ENDS

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