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Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017

Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: Numerical methods for stiff and Hamiltonian problems

Recipient(s): Prof JC Butcher | PI | Auckland Mathematics and Computation Ltd

Public Summary: While traditionally, differential equation solvers have been based on linear multistep or Runge-Kutta methods, each of these has limitations in terms of achievable accuracy, stability and computational cost. General linear methods have been designed to overcome many of these disadvantages. Methods have been developed for both non-stiff and stiff problems; the theoretical knowledge about these methods will be converted into mature software. If the class of methods is extended slightly to include 'Jacobian' evaluations, exponential integrators become available. The success of exponential integrators, as extensions especially of Runge-Kutta methods, suggests applying the same enhancements to general linear methods. For mechanical systems in Hamiltonian formulation, long term integration requires numerical methods which respect physical conservation laws. G-symplectic methods provide an efficient alternative to the use of symplectic Runge-Kutta methods for this type of problem. We will construct such methods which do not suffer from parasitic behaviour, and are capable of good accuracy and efficient implementation. Methods of high order, both standard and partitioned, will be derived for general and partitioned Hamiltonian problems, respectively. The analysis of order and stability barriers for general linear methods will be taken further.

Total Awarded: $328,696

Duration: 3

Host: Auckland Mathematics and Computation Limited

Contact Person: Prof JC Butcher

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 11-AMC-001


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2014

Title: Numerical solution of time-dependent multi-dimensional nonlinear dispersive wave equations with applications to costal hydrodynamics

Recipient(s): Dr D Mitsotakis | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Associate Professor MJ McGuinness | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Professor C Synolakis | AI | University of Southern Caligornia
Professor JL Bona | AI | University of Illinois at Chicago

Public Summary: The mathematical modeling of water waves continues to attract great interest in the scientific community, including mathematics, physics, and engineering. Models that describe water waves are systems of nonlinear partial differential equations. Computing the solutions of these systems requires efficient and accurate numerical methods. However, no numerical method that preserves important conservative quantities has been developed for some modern systems describing fully nonlinear surface waves, or internal waves in shallow waters. Our objective is to develop a theoretical and computational research framework through which we will systematically address the properties of certain nonlinear and dispersive wave systems. In addition, we will study applications important to oceanography and coastal dynamics, such as tsunami wave generation and the propagation of internal waves in the ocean. After studying certain initial-boundary value problems, we will develop and study new conservative Galerkin/Finite Element Methods and novel hybrid schemes for the numerical solution of the mathematical models. The new computational and theoretical tools to be developed as the result of this work will directly influence the research in nonlinear dispersive wave dynamics, and will improve the speed and the accuracy of tsunami early-warning systems, which are critical for mitigating the devastating effects of tsunamis.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Dr D Mitsotakis

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 14-VUW-123


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2012

Title: Nutritionally driven reproductive development: is the male in the driving seat?

Recipient(s): Dr MH Vickers | PI | The University of Auckland
Assoc Prof DM Sloboda | AI | McMaster University

Public Summary: What drives organisms to reproduce ? Is it different in males and females ? Is it regulated by the environment ? To date, we know little about environmental regulatory factors of reproductive function. In this proposal we aim to understand how fetal nutrition can change long-term reproductive strategy: that is, how these changes impact on pubertal onset and whether early puberty results in improved fertility and reproductive fitness. This study will begin to outline a novel mechanism by which nutritional influences modify reproductive maturation. Understanding how early life nutrition influences later life is vital for our understanding of human health, evolutionary biology and life history theory.

Total Awarded: $682,609

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr MH Vickers

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 12-UOA-015


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: Ocean acidification: a physiological and environmental challenge for marine calcifiers

Recipient(s): Dr MA Sewell | PI | The University of Auckland
Professor GE Hofmann | PI | University of California
Dr AJR Hickey | AI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: Ocean acidification (OA) has been described as 'global warming's evil twin'. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide results in changes to ocean chemistry (lower pH and carbonate concentrations), which can impede calcium carbonate skeleton formation and affect the acid-base regulation of marine organisms. In previous experiments we have shown that sea urchin larvae in OA conditions show metabolic depression. Here in Evechinus chloroticus we will examine the mechanistic basis of metabolic depression at three levels (whole organism, metabolism and biochemistry, gene and protein expression), leading to a better understanding of one of the greatest physiological challenges to marine organisms in the 21st century.

Total Awarded: $746,667

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr MA Sewell

Panel: CMP

Project ID: 09-UOA-107


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2009

Title: Ocean acidification: calcifiers are only the tip of the iceberg

Recipient(s): Associate Professor CL Hurd | PI | University of Otago
Professor DA Hutchins | PI | University of Southern California
Professor PW Boyd | AI | NIWA and University of Otago
Dr FX Fu | AI | University of Southern California
Professor KA Hunter | AI | University of Otago

Public Summary: The pH of the world's oceans is decreasing because of the sustained absorption of atmospheric CO2 since the Industrial Revolution, termed ocean acidification. Marine algae are responsible for 50% of global primary productivity. Because ocean acidification alters the availability of dissolved carbon sources essential for algal photosynthesis, it has the potential to affect the productivity of ALL marine algae. Using targeted physiological studies we will examine which algal groups, calcifying and non-calcifying, macroscopic and microscopic, will be the most susceptible to ocean acidification. Results are essential to predict the future vulnerability of New Zealand's algal-based ecosystems to ocean acidification.

Total Awarded: $813,333

Duration: 3

Host: University of Otago

Contact Person: Associate Professor CL Hurd

Panel: EEB

Project ID: 09-UOO-175


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2017

Title: Ocean Mixing at High Reynolds Number: Efficiencies in Extrema

Recipient(s): Dr CL Stevens | PI | NIWA - The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd
Associate Professor GS Carter | AI | University of Hawaii
Dr JM O'Callaghan | AI | NIWA - The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd
Dr HE Phillips | AI | University of Tasmania

Public Summary: Determining how efficient turbulence is at actually mixing a fluid is a “Holy Grail” for modern geophysics - affecting how we understand the oceans, atmosphere and geology of the planet. While ninety percent of the heat captured by the Earth is stored in the oceans, all our large-scale models of geophysical fluids make significant assumptions about how the fluid actually works. This project will seek to quantify the efficiency of turbulent mixing of the ocean at high Reynolds Number (i.e., regions where the ocean is very turbulent). We target these types of waters because they are potentially very important in a global sense, and also they are hard to measure and model. We propose to use the very turbulent waters of Cook Strait, under spring-tide conditions, as a natural laboratory for high Reynolds number flows, where we will conduct Project Cookie-Monster. This will employ cutting-edge technology, including ocean gliders and autonomous profilers, to develop a better way to represent mixing in the ocean when conditions are extremely turbulent. Then we will deploy drifting turbulence-measuring robotic floats into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to look at how this understanding holds up, in what is the largest ocean current on the planet.

Total Awarded: $900,000

Duration: 3

Host: NIWA

Contact Person: Dr CL Stevens

Panel: ESA

Project ID: 17-NIW-010


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2015

Title: Of famines and ancestors: a history of the epigenetic revolution

Recipient(s): Dr T Buklijas | PI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: We are living through a revolution in understanding of heredity. Over the last few decades, suggestions that heredity consists not just of the DNA sequence but also 'epigenetic' mechanisms shaped by environmental influences have informed models of disease and concepts of evolution. Epigenetics, the field studying epigenetic mechanisms, has ben hailed as 'the missing link between the social and the life sciences' with phenomena such as parenting, pollution and stress now seen as leaving marks on our genomes. Yet for all the excitement and publicity, there is no consensus on the scope, significance or even definition of epigenetics. Some argue that the genetic paradigm remains unchallenged; other see epigenetics as the endpoint and vindication of the once-heretical, 'Lamarckian' inheritance of acquired characteristics. As a historian of science and medicine who has spent several years working with scientists in the field of epigenetics at the Liggins Institute, I propose to write the first serious history of the 'epigenetic revolution', and answer to questions: why do we appear to need a new model of heredity? Why has the view of ourselves as systems in constant exchange with our dynamic environment--once dominant, always present, but long marginalized--become so prominent?

Total Awarded: $504,500

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr T Buklijas

Panel: HUM

Project ID: 15-UOA-305


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2013

Title: On the forge: the role of the international judge and arbitrator in the 21st century

Recipient(s): Dr CE Foster | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr ATF Lang | AI | London School of Economics and Political Science

Public Summary: Twenty-first century transnationalism challenges existing conceptions of dispute settlement under public international law. International judges and arbitrators are being asked to perform their traditional role in a new era characterized by increased interdependence, international capital mobility, multinational corporate expansion, novel technologies, global supply chains, environmental pressures, and transborder health risks. Highly diverse disputes arise over private and government activities with transjurisdictional effects, spanning for instance: tobacco control, seabed-mining, rare earth production, aerial spraying, whaling, and major pollution episodes. In this contemporary setting, it appears increasingly that international judges and arbitrators must inevitably take positions on vitally important policy matters, moving beyond the existing conception of the international judicial role that has prevailed for over a century. This research investigates whether international judging today must necessarily take on a more intense political, constitutional or even executive cast. The research is expected to establish a conception of the C21 role of judges and arbitrators as a vital dimension of international government rather than merely as the agents of dispute settlement. This will make an important contribution to ensuring the sustainability of an international legal system that serves the global public rather than disparate private interests.

Total Awarded: $391,304

Duration: 3

Host: The University of Auckland

Contact Person: Dr CE Foster

Panel: HUM

Project ID: 13-UOA-062


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Standard

Year Awarded: 2016

Title: On the theory of distribution-free tests for statistical hypothesis and unitary operators in functional spaces

Recipient(s): Professor EV Khmaladze | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: Along with the observations they make, scientists formulate assumptions about the nature of phenomena they observe. Whenever there is stochasticity, or randomness, in observations, our assumptions should lead to the probabilistic description of what we should have observed, what values with what probabilities. Then comes rigorous theory of how well our probabilities should agree with observations if our theory is correct.

That is how Laplace showed that Earth is a geoid, Mendel demonstrated that genes exist, and Rutherford established the nature of radioactive disintegration. Contemporary examples are too many to name.

Our project develops a new branch of testing – the theory of distribution free tests. This theory has roots in the work of 19th/20th-century influential British natural philosopher and statistician, Karl Pearson, but the possibility of wide development was discovered only recently.

The theory allows us to establish equivalence between wide classes of different statistical testing problems, and thus to essentially reduce distributional work in real practice.

This approach did not come from within probability theory and statistics but from the other field of mathematics, the functional analysis. This again demonstrates that mathematics is not a collection of compartments but a living, unified field of knowledge.

Total Awarded: $585,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Professor EV Khmaladze

Panel: MIS

Project ID: 16-VUW-124


Fund Type: Marsden Fund

Category: Fast-Start

Year Awarded: 2011

Title: One eye on the past and one eye on the future: the role of psychological time in tackling environmental issues

Recipient(s): Dr T Milfont | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Prof E van der Meer | AI | Humboldt University at Berlin

Public Summary: Everyone understands the need to reduce consumption during an electricity shortage, but it can also be very tempting for individuals to continue their regular use of electrical appliances. Behaviours related to the use of resources often represent a conflict between what individuals like to do and what they ought to do for the benefit of society. These situations, in which individual and collective interests are at odds, are known as environmental social dilemmas. Prior research has mainly focused on the social conflict (between individual and collective interests) inherent in environmental dilemmas, but recent research has shown that such dilemmas also entail temporal conflict, a conflict between short-term and long-term interests.

This project will test a recently developed model for investigating temporal conflicts in environmental dilemmas. My Integrative Model of Psychological Time is the first to propose an interrelation between two fundamental aspects of psychological time (time perspective and time succession). The model suggests that individuals’ perceptions concerning the future interact with their consideration of the causal consequences of their actions. The model promises to greatly improve our general understanding of the influence of psychological time on environmental dilemmas, and has direct implications for tackling environmental issues.

Total Awarded: $300,000

Duration: 3

Host: Victoria University of Wellington

Contact Person: Dr T Milfont

Panel: SOC

Project ID: 11-VUW-049


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