Students With Vision Rewarded

Students were rewarded this week for illustrating the downstream benefits of their basic science research.

Post graduate students from around the country were involved in a poster competition, which was displayed at an international conference on biochemistry and molecular biology in Dunedin this week.

“Human capital is one of the best investments New Zealand can make in its future. We need to reward and acknowledge the successes of those who have the ability to turn bright ideas into benefits for all New Zealanders,” said Steve Thompson, Chief Executive of the Foundation for Research Science and Technology.

The Foundation provided two prizes of $250 each to those posters which best reflected the aim of the New Economy Research Fund (NERF), a new fund delivered by the Foundation.

The winners were Timara Sirey from Auckland University for a poster entitled - Introduced vs Native: Are Pheromone Differences Reflected in Pheromone Binding Proteins? and Karen Barwell from Otago University for her poster Generation of a Yeast Model for Batten Disease.

NERF invests in targeted basic research that will underpin the development of commercial opportunities for New Zealand business.

The new fund is likely to play a key role in supporting research into bioinformatics and genome diversity which was the focus of the conference organised by the Federation of Asian and Oceanian Biochemists and Miolecular Biologists.

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