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Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017

Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: For how long can glaciers keep advancing in a warming world?

Recipient(s): Dr B Anderson | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr AN Mackintosh | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Prof J Oerlemans | AI | Universiteit Utrecht

Public Summary: The vast majority of the world's glaciers are retreating as a result of global-scale warming. Yet a small proportion of glaciers, in areas such as New Zealand, have advanced during this period of Earth warming. We will use a coupled energy-balance ice-flow model to test the causes of this advance and assess whether expected future precipitation increases can offset projected temperature increases. The result will be a very detailed projection of future change on New Zealand's iconic and economically important glaciers such as Tasman and Franz Josef. This glacier response dataset will be used to distill the essential climatic, topographic and dynamic characteristics that need to be captured when predicting future glacier response. A simple dynamic model that captures these characteristics will be tested and applied to the New Zealand Glacier inventory of 3144 glaciers, providing the first estimate of future glacier change in this region. The glaciological parameterisations and simple models developed will allow quantitative projections of future glacier change to be made on global glacier datasets, which will ultimately refine the considerable uncertainty in changes in water resources and global sea-level rise estimates.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Dr B Anderson

Panel: ESA

Project ID: 11-VUW-071


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: Fractionating face blindness: Creating a taxonomy for developmental prosopagnosia

Recipient(s): Dr T Susilo | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Associate Professor BC Duchaine | AI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a developmental disorder defined by lifelong impairments in face recognition in the absence of basic visual problems and learning disabilities. DP has detrimental effects on well-being and social functioning, and it is estimated to affect 90,000 people in New Zealand alone. A fundamental issue in DP research is the lack of systematic knowledge about varieties of DP. By diagnosis, DP individuals are impaired at identifying others from their face, but they may or may not be impaired at other cognitive functions such as recognising objects, reading words, perceiving biological motion, or navigating the environment. This research is the first step in our programme to create a taxonomy of DP by fractionating DP into its valid subtypes. We will run a web-based investigation with an unprecedentedly large sample of DP participants, focusing on demarcating DP individuals who show face-specific impairments from those who do not. Results will lay the groundwork for the creation of a DP taxonomy, facilitate research on the cognitive and neural determinants of DP, and inform the development of effective rehabilitation strategies.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Dr T Susilo

Panel: EHB

Project ID: 16-VUW-175


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: Free analysis and convexity

Recipient(s): Dr I Klep | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor JW Helton | AI | University of California, San Diego

Public Summary: Convexity is a basic notion from geometry that is applied for solving problems across many sciences. For instance, in economics and finance, the general equilibrium theory assumes convex preferences, and in statistics and probability Jensen's inequality plays a crucial role. In optimisation, convexity leads to 'safe' and numerically tractable problems. Convex optimisation is employed in control theory, communications and networks, signal processing, mechanical engineering, finance, optimal design in statistics, coding theory, and elsewhere.

This proposal aims to determine classes of optimisation problems which are effectively convex ones, even if they do not look like it. Advances in free analysis and free convexity are yielding exciting new approaches to this question, but there are still fundamental challenges ahead. This proposal intends to overcome these challenges by using algebraic, geometric and analytic tools in a novel way. A focus is the discovery of new geometric results for a class of convex objects arising from linear matrix inequalities.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr I Klep

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 13-UOA-148


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Free Analysis and its Applications

Recipient(s): Associate Professor I Klep | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor SA McCullough | AI | University of Florida
Professor AFM ter Elst | AI | University of Auckland

Public Summary: Convexity is a basic notion from geometry that is applied for solving problems across many sciences. In optimisation, convexity leads to reliable and numerically tractable problems. Convex optimisation is employed in control theory, communications and networks, signal processing, mechanical engineering, finance, optimal design in statistics, coding theory, etc.

This proposal aims to determine classes of optimisation problems which are effectively convex ones, even if they do not look like it. Advances in free analysis and real algebraic geometry are yielding exciting new approaches to this question, but there are still fundamental challenges ahead. This proposal intends to overcome these by using algebraic, geometric and analytic tools in a novel way.

The project is designed modularly consisting of two strands, one focusing on free function theory, and the other on real algebraic geometry and positivity of noncommutative functions. We will also vigorously pursue applications of free analysis to related fields such as operator algebra and quantum information theory. Key for this will be advances in algorithms and their implementations which we intend to make available online to the wider scientific community.

Total Awarded: $455,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Associate Professor I Klep

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 17-UOA-148


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Friends on the forest floor: do facilitative interactions dominate in New Zealand’s unique bryoflora?

Recipient(s): Dr AJ Brandt | PI | Landcare Research
Associate Professor DJ Burritt | AI | University of Otago
Dr DS Glenny | AI | Landcare Research

Public Summary: Competitive species interactions underpin modern theory on how plant communities are structured and which species are present. Facilitation, where the presence of a neighbouring species benefits rather than hinders a plant’s growth, is considered important mainly in harsh environments, where the neighbour could ameliorate the impact of stressful conditions. Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) are the oldest land plants. They lack roots and internal transport vessels, making them fundamentally different from flowering plants. Because bryophytes obtain nutrients and water directly from the atmosphere, they may be more likely to share than compete for resources, and thus may be especially reliant on facilitation between species to acquire and maintain water in their cells. To determine whether facilitative interactions increase in strength under stressful conditions or occur along the entire environmental gradient, we will measure the stress and performance responses of bryophytes grown in monoculture and with other species along experimentally -imposed temperature and moisture gradients. This will allow us to test the generality of current ecological theory derived from studies of flowering plants.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Landcare Research

Contact Person: Dr AJ Brandt

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 17-LCR-012


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: From automatic groups to automatic structures and beyond

Recipient(s): Prof B Khoussainov | PI | The University of Auckland
Prof OG Kharlampovich | PI | McGill University
Prof AG Myasnikov | PI | Stevens Institute of Technology

Public Summary: Finite state machines such as automata constitute a simple mathematical yet a powerful model of
computer programs. By automata we typically mean any of the following: finite automata, tree automata, Buchi automata, and Rabin automata. Automata possess nice algebraic properties and many algorithmic problems about automata are decidable. These make automata important in applications and theoretical studies. This project investigates limits and possibilities of automata in representation of important mathematical structures, e.g. groups and graphs. Structures that have automata representations in a certain precise sense include fragments of the arithmetic, e.g. Skolem and Presburger arithmetic, state spaces of computer programs, and fundamental groups of many 3-dimensional manifolds. Topics include: (1) finding necessary and sufficient conditions for structures to possess representations by automata with an emphasis to tree automatic structures; (2) Investigating the relationship between various definitions of automaticity for structures. Examples of such definitions are Thurston's definition of automatic group and Khoussainov-Nerode's definition of automatic structures; (3) Computing invariants of mathematical structures represented by automata; (4) Studying geometric and algorithmic properties of structures (such as groups) represented by automata. These topics have both theoretical and practical significance.

Total Awarded: $291,304

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Prof B Khoussainov

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 10-UOA-165


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2010

Title: From genomics to properties of the last Eukaryote common ancestor

Recipient(s): Prof D Penny | PI | Massey University
Mr M Irimia | AI | University of Barcelona
Dr S Roy | AI | Stanford University

Public Summary: Eukaryotes show a tremendous diversity of lifestyles, from plants and fungi that make all necessary chemical compounds from only very basic food sources, to animals that acquire many essential amino acids and enzyme cofactors (vitamins) by consuming other organisms. But which came first?
The nature and origins of the earliest complex unicellular eukaryotes remains a mystery, and one with deep implications for the history of life on earth. We are using new genomic sequences from every group of eukaryotics to test information about the biosynthetic capabilities of two key early ancestors: (i) the last common ancestor of all modern eukaryotes; and (ii) the ancestral cell that engulfed the mitochondrion. These results will help resolve some of the most central questions of the origins of complex life. Our immediate goal is to reconstruct the biosynthetic enzymes present in early ancestors of all eukaryotes. The longer-term goal is to put real biology into genomics (or vice versa): to harness comparative genomics to yield useful information about the life history and cell biology of organisms.

Total Awarded: $683,242

Duration: 3

Host: Massey University

Contact Person: Prof D Penny

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 10-MAU-096


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: From genotypes to phenotypes: Quantifying the functional load

Recipient(s): Professor MP Cox | PI | Massey University Manawatu
Dr I Gallego Romero | AI | Nanyang Technological University

Public Summary: We now have a good understanding of genetic diversity within species, especially in humans. But simply describing diversity was never the main goal of genetics. The question was always bigger: what fraction of genetic change actually causes a corresponding change in phenotype? Leveraging a unique human metapopulation system of small traditional villages in eastern Indonesia, we will jointly analyze genome-scale DNA, RNA, and methylation to quantify how much DNA diversity has functional effects, therefore presenting a target for selection, rather than simply reflecting noise and drift. By moving away from the strongly Eurocentric focus of previous research, we also offer a more representative picture of human diversity, with immediate downstream relevance to the history and health of Pacific peoples. This will provide evolutionary insight into the genome dynamics of traditional human populations, within the kinds of small community networks where most human evolution historically occurred. Biomedical studies typically lack this evolutionary framing, and we will thus provide a necessary perspective to advance burgeoning applications in genomic health. More fundamentally, disentangling the genotype-phenotype spectrum allows us to address an outstanding question in genetics: how much of the DNA diversity we observe is functional?

Total Awarded: $925,000

Duration: 3

Host: Massey University Manawatu

Contact Person: Professor MP Cox

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 17-MAU-040


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: From Geothermal Hot Springs to Microbial Gene Pools: Explaining Intra-Species Genomic Variations in Bacteria

Recipient(s): Dr CK Lee | PI | The University of Waikato
Professor MF Polz | PI | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor SC Cary | AI | University of Waikato
Dr MB Stott | AI | University of Canterbury

Public Summary: Natural bacterial populations are known to exhibit extraordinary intra-species genomic variations, an inconvenient truth not satisfactorily explained by the conventional framework for evolution, where natural selection acts on individual organisms exhibiting traits rather than directly on trait-conferring genes. Recent studies, however, have reported gene-specific selective sweeps of advantageous mutations across bacterial populations. This suggests that our current operational definitions of bacterial “species” do not in fact delineate bacterial populations that respond to natural selection in a cohesive manner, and that horizontal gene transfer, which is prevalent in bacteria, needs to be explicitly considered when defining bacterial “species”.

Leveraging outputs from a near-national survey of New Zealand’s geothermal microbial communities, we will attempt to resolve this paradox by examining the ecological population theory, which postulates that ecologically cohesive microbial populations are delineated by gene-flow boundaries. We hypothesise that ecological populations of bacteria exhibit behaviours analogous to metazoan populations, and we will test our hypothesis by answering three questions: (1) how do ecological populations respond to changes in environmental conditions; (2) do ecological populations exhibit biogeographical and dispersal patterns like those observed in metazoan populations; and (3) can we understand the mechanisms maintaining ecological populations by tracking them through a time series?

Total Awarded: $925,000

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Waikato

Contact Person: Dr CK Lee

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 17-UOW-026


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: From parasitism to mutualism: symbiosis interaction states and the adaptability of reef corals to climate change

Recipient(s): Associate Professor SK Davy | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Professor RD Gates | AI | University of Hawaii
Professor AR Grossman | AI | Stanford University
Professor VM Weis | AI | Oregon State University

Public Summary: Coral reefs are in rapid decline, in part because warming causes corals to lose their symbiotic algae (bleaching). This provides an opportunity for infection by more thermally resistant, but less beneficial ('parasitic') algal types. However the long-term consequences of this parasitism might not be negative, as host selection can cause some parasites to become more mutualistic over time. We propose that such a shift can occur in corals, providing a mechanism by which they can adapt to warming. We will employ a powerful suite of molecular, cellular and physiological techniques to test this hypothesis. First we will characterise the cellular mechanisms that regulate the proliferation of mutualistic versus parasitic algae through the host's tissues. We will then test the competitiveness of these different algal types under a range of predicted global warming scenarios, and establish whether host fitness improves over time in those symbioses that initially tend towards parasitism. Our hugely experienced NZ-US team is ideally placed to tackle this project, at a time when public awareness of the threats posed by bleaching are at an all-time high due to the recent catastrophic events on the Great Barrier Reef, where 93% of reefs have reportedly been impacted.

Total Awarded: $830,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Associate Professor SK Davy

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 16-VUW-002


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