Our researchers

Ā mātou kairangahau

Surfactants are materials that can sit at the interface between oil and water, allowing these two very different liquids to mix. This simple property has placed them at the centre of a US$45 billion a year global industry, which includes cleaning products, cosmetics, personal care, plastics, food & beverage, and agricultural chemicals. 

“They’re like naughty children, but worse,” says fresh water crayfish (kōura) farmer John Hollows, who manages a kōura aquaculture business within the Ernslaw One forestry estate.

PCR and RAT tests can tell you that you’re infected with Covid-19, but SfTI researcher Dr Peter Li’s working on a saliva test that can tell in minutes whether it’s Delta, Omicron or another strain.

Science for Technological Innovation (SfTI) Seed fund researcher, Dr Leonie Jones (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa), has always loved science but it was her high school science teacher who inspired her to make it her career.

A platform device for vision testing applications

Dr Sarah Kessans, a lecturer in the University of Canterbury’s School of Product Design, is passionate about growing stuff in space, ultimately food, fuel and pharmaceuticals to benefit society.

Dr Nancy Garrity alongside mātauranga Māori practitioners kuia Leilani Rickard and her mokopuna Anastasia are developing a polymer composite material with tī kōuka using traditional tikanga-led fibre collection and extraction techniques. This material is set to compete with synthetic fibres and catapult brand Aotearoa-NZ to the world stage.

Protecting the safety of kaimoana for future generations

A tragedy in Dr Sungchul Jung’s homeland of South Korea has inspired a project seeking to leverage virtual reality (VR) technology to help doctors more effectively treat patients.

New technology being developed as part of a SfTI research project, could provide an alternative to painful biopsies used to diagnose a rare and potentially fatal neuromuscular disorder – malignant hyperthermia.

Taking on Micro-pollutants: Have you ever worried about chemicals you might be ingesting on a daily basis?

Imagine you are one of the 260,000 patients with diabetes in New Zealand. You will experience some level of vision loss in your life because of diabetes.

In a pool in the Auckland suburb of Remuera, small-scale submarines are getting their first watery glimpses of the world.

Dr Will Browne says modern artificial intelligence is still very easily fooled.

Software problems do more than slow your computer down. Your car won’t start, and for those who can remember back to Y2K, there’s the general fear that everything could suddenly screech to a grinding halt.

Over 10 years of data, you might think the key to a successful forestry plantation is rainfall, but what if the data is examined over 100 years?

How do you monitor the numbers of native birds in our forests when the tui and bellbirds are imitating each other and the trill sounds of the ruru (moreporks) sound just like kiwi?

Augmented reality, where a computer-generated image is overlaid onto what’s really there by a virtual reality headset, works pretty well in a small room.

Electricity costs are a significant burden for many farms, especially those that run extensive irrigation and dairying operations.

New Zealand is small, but we control an enormous stretch of ocean that’s around 15 times bigger – more than 4 million square kilometres.

In New Zealand children with cerebral palsy are not physically assessed until age six, in part because they need to be able to keep very still while 40 markers are exactingly fitted to their legs, and then be able to follow precise instructions about where and how to move in a purpose-built facility.

Making technology that works for its intended community can be challenging.

The anti-inflammatory properties of fish oil have made it a global $450 million-dollar industry driven by high amounts of omega-3s, but the herrings, sardines, mackerel, salmon and tuna don’t make the omega-3s themselves.

If you take an artery from any animal at the freezing works and remove the blood, muscle and other tissues, you’ll be left with collagen. And that collagen is chemically the same as what’s found in your own bones, muscles, skin and tendons – it’s the most abundant protein you have.

A field of poppies in full blossom would look very different if you were colour blind – and being unable to detect red from green could also affect your career opportunities.

Your computer takes time to boot up from cold because the hundreds of billions of transistors it contains are all busy asking the CPU what state they were in when the computer was shut down.

Most horticultural spraying uses air-blast sprayers, which fire droplets of fertiliser or insecticide in a cloud around the orchard or vineyard, hoping that each leaf will be covered.

What if a piece of technological equipment, vital for the manufacture of radio, radar, blue tooth and wireless could be converted from measuring radio waves to measuring sound?

It’s dark inside your brain, and if you shone a torch in there, the tissues would also be soft, slippery and shiny-looking.

Imagine having little sensors buried around your market garden telling you at 15-minute intervals what the soil’s moisture content and temperature readings were.

Touch screens are everywhere. They’re light-weight, easy to modify, and can be intuitively appealing to use.

There are thousands of lines of code inside a cardiac implantable device, like a pacemaker, and that software is kept busy just trying not to over-react to the day-to-day heart rhythm changes a person goes through as they walk around, climb a few stairs, get cold, read a book, get a big fright or sleep.

‘I can’t talk right now, my mussels aren’t feeding' — the aquaculture farmer ends the call and scrolls through his phone to his mussel mood dashboard, to find out what’s upsetting the crop.

Battery technology is a science hot-spot around the world. Multimillion-dollar research companies in the United States, China, Japan and Europe are racing to find the next big capacity boost to overtake the current front-runner – lithium-ion batteries.

We know Sally as the Director of the SfTI Challenge, however she has many more strings to her bow.

Renee is one of our SfTI researchers. She grew up in rural Australia and moved to New Zealand in 2016 with her husband Rich, and her children Ella (6) and Evan (3).

‘They taught me logging, I taught them calculus’ - tree fella to SfTI scientist, Dr Richard Parker.

Based at Lincoln AgriTec, Te Awhina Arahanga is at the interface between several SfTI research projects and Te Waihora environs and Rūnanga.

Iranian-born researcher Amir Haji Rassouliha is part of an Auckland Bioengineering Institute team within Auckland University working on a 2016 SfTI SEED project titled A giant leap for small displacements.

Based at GNS Science at Lower Hutt, Ion Beam Material Scientist Dr Jerome Leveneur, works in a team that includes John Vedamuthu Kennedy and George Chisholm. 

Waikato University Computer Science Professor Steve Reeves heads up a 2017 SfTI SEED project examining how the distributed ledger technology Blockchain will impact New Zealand, and can best be used to protect our interests.

In SfTI’s 2016 SEED funding round, Otago University chemists Dr Eng Wui Tan and Associate Professor Stephen Moratti received $100,000 to investigate developing materials that would act as drug reservoirs, but only release some of their payload on appropriate stimulation.