Funding for toxins, business and bacteria
university-of-waikato
Fri Sep 24 2010 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Funding for toxins, business and bacteria
Friday, 24 September 2010, 10:00 am
Press Release: University of Waikato
Media Release
September 24, 2010
Embargoed until 1am Friday 25 September.
Marsden funding for toxins, video games, business and bacteria
Waikato University has secured nearly $5.5 million in Marsden research funding announced today. Nine researchers have received funding including Professor Craig Cary who will lead a team investigating the phantom marine toxin TTX that was found to be responsible for a number of dogs dying on Auckland beaches last summer. Professor Cary has been awarded $750,000 over three years to discover the exact origin of TTX and its life-cycle.
Marketing professor Harald Van Heerde receives $740,000 over three years to investigate whether firms can spend their way out of a recession. The typical reaction of businesses in hard times is to slash investments in innovation, advertising and marketing, because they are often easiest to cut. Van Heerde says it could be the opposite; that marketing investments are more effective during recessions than booms. The research will provide insights into how New Zealand firms can better navigate economic turbulence using marketing investments.
Two academics from the University’s Department of Screen and Media have each received more than $400,000. Dr Gareth Schott will study the impact of video games on players, which could in turn influence censorship classification, and Dr Craig Hight will study online documentary.
Biological scientist, Associate Professor Vic Arcus receives almost $900,000 over three years to research the adaptation of bacteria to survive in different and hostile environments. It’s research that could have important implications in the development of new antibiotics.
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Associate Professor John Perrone from the Department of Psychology has been awarded almost $750,000 to develop his research into visual motion and human depth perception. His work in understanding how the brain extracts information about obstacles in front of us will help engineers to recreate human depth perception in single camera robot vision systems, and provide insights into the visual information used for activities such as walking and driving.
In other projects Professor David Lowe receives $825,000 to study volcanic ash layers which will allow ancient DNA analysis and help provide reconstructions of environmental and climatic change over the past 25,000 years. Dr Tahu Kukutai from Waikato’s Population Studies Centre will study ethnicity and census and biological scientist Dr Charlie Lee will be studying micro-organisms in Antarctica’s Dry Valleys.
The Marsden Fund is regarded as a hallmark of excellence, allowing New Zealand’s best researchers to explore their ideas. It supports projects in the sciences, technology, engineering and maths, social sciences and the humanities. The fund is administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand on behalf of the government.
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