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Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017

Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: Engagement rings: using molecular rings and metal nano-particles to detect single molecules

Recipient(s): Dr JL Tallon | PI | Industrial Research Ltd
Dr HK Hossain | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr SV Chong | AI | Industrial Research Ltd
Dr GR Willmott | AI | Industrial Research Ltd

Public Summary: This programme establishes a novel generic nanotechnology platform, comprising metal
nanoparticles tethered to cyclodextrin molecular rings, for detection of single molecules and
potentially for DNA sequencing. The cyclodextrin rings bind the nanoparticles to a fixed
separation, enabling a huge signal amplification in surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)
sufficient to detect single molecules as they diffuse through or bind inside the cyclodextrin ring.
The platform will be used in combination with a variable nanopore to correlate
spectroscopic signals with occlusion events and, in a second phase, to identify base sequences in
lengths of DNA.

Total Awarded: $730,435

Duration: 3

Host: Industrial Research Ltd

Contact Person: Dr JL Tallon

Panel: PCB

Project ID: 10-IRL-005


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2008

Title: Engaging women and migrants in public policy making

Recipient(s): Dr R Simon-Kumar | PI | University of Waikato
Assoc Prof C Kingfisher | AI | University of Lethbridge

Public Summary: A peculiarity of contemporary public policy in New Zealand is the emphasis on relationships-based policymaking; that is, consulting, building relationships, and networking with stakeholders. Relational policymaking practices, by seeking citizen participation into state decision making, are considered to be particularly beneficial to marginalised groups. In New Zealand, however, they are implemented by a public sector driven by principles of managerialism that emphasise fiscal and institutional efficiency. The proposed project, by focusing on recent policies for migrants/new settlers and women, seeks to critically evaluate how these contradictory values influence the state's attempts to include marginalised groups/interests.

Total Awarded: $270,222

Duration: 3

Host: University of Waikato

Contact Person: Dr R Simon-Kumar

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 08-UOW-002


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2012

Title: Engineering optical near fields: principles and techniques for applications in sensing and lithography

Recipient(s): Prof RJ Blaikie | PI | University of Otago

Public Summary: Controlling light at scales much smaller than its wavelength allows us to see, sense and pattern down to the molecular level. The prospect of ‘perfect’ imaging—using visible light (wavelengths 400-750 nm) to sense or image at molecular scales (1-10 nm)—is enticing, and new developments in this field are now entering the marketplace.

This field, known as 'nanophotonics', is rapidly advancing. Using nanophotonics light can confined to precisely-defined nano-scale regions; these so-called near-fields, once in the right place at the right wavelength, can then be used in applied technologies ranging from biosensors to advanced nanofabrication. But the principles and techniques for such engineering are in many ways is still in their infancy. They usually require special ‘tricks’ of the light, and still do not bring to bear many of the powerful ideas of contemporary optical physics, such as negative refraction, superlensing, metamaterials or transformation optics.

We have developed a new surface-state field enhancement framework (SSFEF) and have already made an important demonstration of how it can be used to dramatically improve near-field super-imaging—in this program this discovery will be expanded to provide a comprehensive set of principles for designing new advanced sensing and lithography systems.

Total Awarded: $791,304

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Prof RJ Blaikie

Panel: EIS

Project ID: 12-UOO-019


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: Enhancing communication intervention for children with autism

Recipient(s): Prof JS Sigafoos | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr D Sutherland | PI | University of Canterbury

Public Summary: Autism is a severe disability affecting 1 in every 150 children. Approximately 50% of these children will fail to develop speech. Without an alternative to speech, these children are significantly disadvantaged. Manual signing, picture-exchange communication, and electronic speech-generating devices have all been proposed as possible alternatives to speech. There is considerable debate, but little research, on which of these three communication options is best suited to children with autism. This project will explore the intriguing possibilities that children with autism might prefer one option to others and that accommodating such preferences will enhance the children’s communication development. The project aims to (a) develop effective procedures for assessing children’s preferences for the three different forms of alternative communication and (b) determine the effects of incorporating such preferences into the children’s communication therapy programmes. Our hypotheses are that children will show idiosyncratic preferences for different forms of alternative communication and that use of the child's most preferred option will improve the acquisition and maintenance of alternative communication skills. Confirmation of these hypotheses would pave the way for applying similar preference-enhanced approaches to other areas of child therapy, such as academic problems, conduct disorders, obesity, and phobias.

Total Awarded: $769,565

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Prof JS Sigafoos

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 10-VUW-071


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: Entrepreneurial networking and foreign market entry decision making

Recipient(s): Professor SK Chetty | PI | University of Otago
Professor M Baucus | AI | University of Otago
Associate Professor S Freeman | AI | The University of Adelaide
Associate Professor J Weerawardena | AI | The University of Queensland

Public Summary: The purpose of this project is to adopt recent advancements in entrepreneurship theory to better understand the decision paths of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in their efforts to penetrate global markets. While entrepreneurship is considered in many countries to be an important way to create employment and socio-economic and technological progress, we have little theoretical understanding of how entrepreneurs make decisions about which foreign markets to enter. We use an emerging theory from entrepreneurship- effectuation- as well as theories about the internationalisation process and social and business networks from the international business literature. These theories form the foundation of our qualitative research aimed at developing new conceptual insights and hypotheses about SME pre-internationalisation. We then conduct quantitative research to test our hypotheses using a large cross-country sample of SMEs in New Zealand and Australia. This study advances theory development in both entrepreneurship and international business. It provides managers and policy makers with new paradigms for boosting exports by encouraging non-exporters to enter international markets and inexperienced exporters to improve their internationalisation capabilities. As entrepreneurs gain more knowledge about foreign markets they increase their international sales and subsequently foster opportunities for employment growth.

Total Awarded: $773,913

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Professor SK Chetty

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 13-UOO-065


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Epigenetics and Evolutionary Theory

Recipient(s): Professor HG Spencer | PI | University of Otago

Public Summary: Epigenetic changes do not affect the DNA sequence of an individual. Rather, a variety of removable chemical mechanisms temporarily mark the genome, thereby modifying expression of the genes. Appropriate epigenetic markings in different tissues at different life stages are critical in the correct development and function of every individual organism. Intriguingly, we have recently discovered that, instead of being reset every generation, some epigenetic marks can be passed on unchanged from one generation to the next. Moreover, individuals in a population may differ from each other in their epigenetic markings: just as natural populations exhibit genetic variation, so do they harbour epigenetic variation. This project asks how we can explain this transgenerationally inherited epigenetic variation in natural populations and what might be the consequences for evolution. The researchers will construct and analyse new mathematical models to investigate these matters, validating these models with data from real examples, and using the models to make novel predictions about the properties of epigenetic variation in nature. Thus, this research will lead to a significantly improved appreciation of a fundamental feature of evolution and a more accurate description of inheritance in all its forms.

Total Awarded: $825,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Professor HG Spencer

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 16-UOO-106


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2014

Title: Epigenetics and flexible plant memory: how past environmental cues lead to episodic mast flowering

Recipient(s): Professor MH Turnbull | PI | University of Canterbury
Professor D Kelly | PI | University of Canterbury
Dr JW Love | AI | University of Canterbury
Associate Professor R MacKnight | AI | University of Otago
Associate Professor A Poole | AI | University of Canterbury

Public Summary: Plant flowering can vary greatly among years in response to resources and environmental cues, especially in 'mast-seeding' perennial plants, which intermittently produce huge seed crops. Mast seeding is especially common in New Zealand. The underlying mechanism determining masting frequency is still debated. Plants appear to 'measure' the difference between current and previous year temperatures and use that to adapt flowering temperature threshholds to local site microclimates. This proposed mechanism fits the observed flowering patterns, but it is not known how the plants could 'remember' temperatures over two years. We propose that epigenetics
(heritable changes in gene expression that cannot be explained by DNA sequence) holds the key. Here we will test whether plants possess an environmental memory by epigenetic silencing and/or activation of key flowering genes. We will establish the role of epigenetic switching in regulating episodic flowering in response to temperature cues. This will improve our understanding of the ecological knock-on effects of large intermittent seed crops, and will provide broadly applicable information on how plants can 'remember' features of their environment to let them respond more successfully.

Total Awarded: $775,000

Duration: 3

Host: University of Canterbury

Contact Person: Professor MH Turnbull

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 14-UOC-013


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: Episodic creep at the brittle-ductile transition during the seismic cycle of great earthquakes

Recipient(s): Prof DJ Prior | PI | University of Otago
Prof WB Durham | AI | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Assoc Prof SJ Fitzsimons | AI | University of Otago
Assoc Prof DL Goldsby | AI | Brown University
Prof JG Hirth | AI | Brown University
Assoc Prof MB Holness | AI | University of Cambridge
Assoc Prof P Langhorne | AI | University of Otago
Assoc Prof T Little | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr VG Toy | AI | University of Otago
Dr P Upton | AI | GNS Science

Public Summary: We will make a fundamental contribution to the understanding of rock deformation and the nucleation of earthquakes by investigating the effect of stress cycling, associated with earthquakes in the Earth’s upper crust, on solid-state flow (creep) below the brittle-ductile transition (BDT). To achieve this we will conduct creep experiments, using ice and ice-mica/ice-graphite mixtures as rock analogues, to quantify the microstructural and mechanical changes that occur during stress cycling. We will use a new experimental approach that tracks the microstructural evolution throughout a high strain experiment and relates microstructural evolution directly to mechanical changes. We will compare ice microstructures with those of experimentally deformed crustal rocks so that we can use rock microstructures to constrain microstructural and mechanical trajectories and we will apply these tools to the interpretation of naturally deformed rocks in the fossil BDT of the Alpine Fault zone. Microstructures of ice and rock will be quantified from electron backscatter diffraction data. Finally we will use numerical models to extrapolate microstructural and mechanical changes from laboratory data to time and length-scales relevant to the Alpine Fault zone, so that we can quantify the creep response at and below the BDT to stress cycles associated with great earthquake events.

Total Awarded: $795,652

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Prof DJ Prior

Panel: ESA

Project ID: 11-UOO-045


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: Epithelial cell wound repair: a novel in vitro approach to elucidate meningococcal virulence mechanisms

Recipient(s): Dr JK MacKichan | PI | Institute of Environmental Science and Research
Dr DR Martin | AI | Institute of Environmental Science and Research

Public Summary: Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus) usually inhabits the throat asymptomatically, but can cause potentially fatal meningococcal disease, with certain environmental factors increasing risk. Our novel findings demonstrate that disease-associated meningococci inhibit epithelial cell wound repair in vitro, in contrast with carriage-associated strains. This, the first demonstration of a correlation between disease association and in vitro phenotype, has excited our desire to identify meningococcal factors that manipulate host cell signalling and motility, and to characterise the host-pathogen interactions that determine meningococcal behaviour. Such findings could provide information vital for enabling protection from the ravages of meningococcal disease.

Total Awarded: $266,667

Duration: 3

Host: Institute of Environmental Science and Research

Contact Person: Dr JK MacKichan

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 09-ESR-006


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: Equilibrium states of operator algebras associated to dynamical systems

Recipient(s): Prof I Raeburn | PI | University of Otago
Prof A an Huef | PI | University of Otago

Public Summary: Dynamical systems are mathematical objects used to model change. The time evolution in a system is often modelled by an action of the real line on the states of the system, and measurable quantities, called observables, are modelled by functions on the state space. In models from physics, it is particularly important to understand a family of stationary states called equilibrium states. There is now a generally accepted mathematical formulation of equilibrium state, which makes sense even when the system is not physical, and which is often interesting from a purely mathematical point of view.

The object of this project is to study the equilibrium states of systems of wide interest arising from different areas of mathematics, including number theory, graph theory, combinatorics and algebra. The main techniques will be those of functional analysis: the observables of the system will be realised as transformation on infinite-dimensional vector spaces and the states built from vectors. This project will provide good opportunities for research training because the general approach will be informed by detailed study of key examples.

Total Awarded: $508,696

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Prof I Raeburn

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 11-UOO-180


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