Infrequently Asked Questions

Plastic solar cells – which may start appearing on hardware store shelves in the next decade – do things a little differently from the silicon-based photovoltaic variety. They’re bendy, less efficient but getting steadily more so, and they also emit tiny bursts of fluorescent light. Dr Justin Hodgkiss, Senior Lecturer at Victoria University and Principal Investigator at the MacDiarmid … Read More

Associate Professor Donna Rose AddisWhen Associate Professor Donna Rose Addis gets study participants to imagine – for example, their dad in a laser tag park with an inflatable boat – she finds a surprising thing. The more variable their brain signal, the better the story the participants tell. The University of Auckland Associate Professor explains how a Marsden grant … Read More

Victoria University’s Dr Ruzica Dadic It may be as slow as watching paint dry, but measuring how fast air bubbles move through slices of ice is far from boring. The slow sublimation of gas bubbles under a temperature gradient in ice cores tells Victoria University’s Dr Ruzica Dadic a complex story about how much we might be missing … Read More

Like the Lorax, the University of Auckland’s Cate Macinnis-Ng speaks for the trees. A plant ecophysiologist, she translates how kauri trees respond to drought based on probes, loggers, and sensors. Dr Macinnis-Ng explains how her Marsden-funded research can help inform both the past and the future of these giants of Northland’s forests. Why did you choose to work on … Read More

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Emeritus Professor Michael Corballis Left and right-handed people are watching pantomimes and making up words in the latest Marsden-funded work by the University of Auckland’s Emeritus Professor Michael Corballis. While the study participants are thinking about gestures and language, the research team is watching their brains. Professor Corballis explains why this may help us understand how talking in humans … Read More

Dr Rachel Zajac Dr Rachel Zajac works at the intersection of psychology and law. She’s looked at how jurors make their decisions, why eyewitnesses are often mistaken, and why forensic science evidence might not be as reliable as it looks on TV. With clever experiments and careful research, she works to prevent miscarriages of justice. Now she’s focused on … Read More

When Associate Professor Ilze Ziedins goes to work, she chooses between taking the ferry or driving her car. The car trip sometimes takes a mere 15 minutes, but if the roads are congested it can last an hour or more. So she has a personal interest in her research on the mathematics of networks, and how real-time information can help. Read More

Gavin Hunt was researching his PhD in New Caledonia, looking into the plight of a flightless endemic bird called the kagu, when he first spotted the local crows. Now, four Marsden grants later, one of these clever crows has over a million hits on youtube and the research is helping us understand how early humans may have learned to make … Read More