Eight new professors appointed

Media release
17 July 2007

Eight new professors appointed

Eight academic staff at The University of Auckland have been promoted from associate professor to professor.

Promotion to professor is a mark of distinction, awarded for professional and academic eminence at an international level.

Professor Klaus Bosselmann (Law) is a specialist in the ethical and legal issues surrounding sustainable development, climate change, biodiversity and biotechnology. He has also published widely on ecological approaches to justice, human rights and global governance. Since 1999 he has been Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law at the Faculty of Law.

Professor Pradeep Bansal (Mechanical Engineering) has focused his research on improving energy efficiency in household and commercial appliances. This has involved him particularly in designing, modelling and developing innovative refrigeration systems. He has established strong linkages with industry in the Asia-Pacific region and active research collaboration internationally.

Professor Neil Broom (Chemical and Materials Engineering) has conducted pioneering research in the field of experimental tissue mechanics. Neil has made significant contributions to bioprosthetic heart-valve development, cartilage structure and arthritis research and intervertebral disc biomechanics. A gifted teacher, he has received numerous Faculty of Engineering teaching awards and two University of Auckland Distinguished Teaching Awards.

Professor Wayne Cutfield (Liggins Institute) leads clinical research into how environmental influences early in life can affect childhood growth and development in ways that could lead to chronic conditions in adult life. He has an international reputation for research assessing how the hormone insulin is secreted and acts in children. He has also played a lead role in international collaborative research into growth disorders.

Professor Alistair Gunn (Physiology) is one of the world’s leading experts in perinatal physiology and neuroscience. As co-director of the Fetal Physiology and Neuroscience Group, he has undertaken wide-ranging research on the impact of oxygen deprivation before birth, how it causes injury, and how that injury can be detected, prevented or treated. His studies guided the development of clinical trials of hypothermia and have established brain cooling as the first treatment for the devastating effects of birth injury.

Professor Philip Harris (Biological Sciences) has conducted high-level research into plant cell walls. These structures play a dynamic and central role in plant growth and development, and are important in many aspects of agriculture, horticulture, forestry, food science, and medicine. His research employs biochemical and chemical techniques as well as light and electron microscopy.

Professor Annamarie Jagose (Film, Television and Media Studies) is a noted feminist and queer cultural theorist whose current research project is a cultural history of the complex and contradictory meanings that have accrued to orgasm across the twentieth century. She is also working on a Marsden Fund project “Acts and Identities: Towards a New Cultural History of Sex.” Her novel Slow Water won major literary awards in both Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Martin Wild (Anatomy with Radiology) has research interests mainly in comparative neuroanatomy and neurobiology, focusing on the avian brain. He has published extensively on all the sensory and motor systems of birds and for the past 15 years his research has dealt with the neural control of vocalisation, specifically with the mechanisms underlying the coordination of respiration and vocalisation.

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