Background

The Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge (SfTI) is a 10-year (2014-2024) science investment
with a mission to enhance the capacity of Aotearoa-New Zealand to use physical sciences and engineering for economic growth and prosperity. SfTI comes to an end on June 30 2024 

New Zealand is a vibrant and prosperous technology-driven economy, with new businesses offering high-value services and products that may not yet have been invented.

SfTI aims to develop world-leading science and technology relevant to Aotearoa New Zealand, with a focus on building enduring partnerships between researchers, Māori organisations and industry. We have invested in 97 projects and supported over 680 researchers from 41 research organisations.

We bring together some of New Zealand’s best physical science and engineering talent (researchers) from our research partners, Māori and industry.

SfTI is guided by a set of values and principles.

Our research themes (areas of focus) cover:

• Materials, manufacturing technology and design
• Sensors, robotics and automation
• Data science & digital technologies
• Vision Mātauranga

Across these themes, we have supported and invested in large multi-disciplinary Spearhead projects and small high-risk Seed projects.

In the final two years of the Challenge, we have identified projects for further funding that have the greatest potential impact. These include our Ending with Impact Projects (EWIPs) and our Early Career Researcher Bolt-on projects. 

Our goal is to unite mātauranga Māori and western science to explore new and exciting opportunities to build a vibrant and prosperous technology-driven economy. Read more about the initiatives we have in place, to ensure we continue to deliver Vision Mātauranga impact.

SfTI also offers its researchers, a Capacity Development (professional development) Programme to support them to take their careers to the next level. The focus of this programme is to support our researchers to build their human (soft skills) and relational (networking) capacity. The goal is improve connections between researchers, Māori and industry so that science is not left ‘stranded in the lab’.