Previous Recipients
On 5 September 2023, New Zealand held its Falling Walls Lab event with presenters from around Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific.
Videos of the presentations are available to watch on Royal Society Te Apārangi YouTube channel and Photos from 2023 Falling Walls Lab Aotearoa New Zealand.
2023 Falling Walls Presentations:
| Name | Organisation | Presentation Title | Problem | Solution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bryann Avendano | University of Canterbury | Breaking the Wall of Resilience Planning | Training and education in disaster planning are essential for effective resilience management. However, the current state of the art in wildfire education in New Zealand does not utilize digital technology or participatory modeling to train communities and policymakers. What could be effectiveness? | Incorporating digital technology and participatory modeling in wildfire education can enhance community and policymaker engagement, improve decision-making, and increase the effectiveness of disaster planning, leading to better wildfire resilience management in both rural and urban New Zealand. |
| Ashlee Berryman | University of Otago | Breaking the Wall of Endometriosis | The present study aims to 1) utilise a diverse cognitive battery to identify areas/types of cognition most negatively affected by endometriosis, and 2) better understand the cause and effect(s) of altered neural connections in the brain, using the neuroimaging technique electroencephalography. | Understanding which areas of cognition are most impacted will aid in developing effective strategies to improve the cognitive deficits that are reported by approximately 65% of patients. Further, understanding the implications of brain alterations may aid in the development of effective treatments. |
| Kristin Bohm | Institute of Environmental Science and Research Ltd. | Breaking the Wall of Wasting our Waste | More than 30 million dry tonnes of biosolids (i.e. dewatered and treated sewage sludge) are generated globally per year. Poor financial outcomes associated to waste recovery result often in unsustainable management practices that are threating to the environment and public health. | Black Soldier Fly-based bioconversion is an emerging technology that could counteract the issue of low profits from resource recovery of sewage sludge. This technology generates two products which can be used for other industries and also reduces large amount (< 50%) of organic waste in short time. |
| Max Dang Vu | The University of Auckland | Breaking the Wall of Breast Cancer Visualisation | Identifying and localising breast tumours is essential for successful breast cancer treatment, but the differing patient positions between diagnostic imaging and treatment procedures pose a challenge. No tools currently exist for visualising breast tumour locations in different positions. | I propose a physics-driven augmented reality (AR) platform to provide clinicians with real-time navigational guidance for breast cancer treatment. The platform predicts breast tumours' location and overlays the predictions directly on patients during treatment. |
| Benjamín Durán-Vinet | University of Otago | Breaking the Wall of Marine Biomonitoring | Currently, anthropogenic climate change is shifting overall species distributions. The sea is warming and thus allowing marine invasive species to establish and outcompete native marine species rapidly in New Zealand, threatening its unique marine biodiversity and valuable ecosystem services. | Marine invasive species jeopardise New Zealand ecosystems and its promising NZ$7.4B blue economy. Therein, deploying robust biosecurity tools is decisive to this end. Accordingly, I present CRISPR-Cas as a swift, portable, highly sensitive and precise biosensor for next-gen biomonitoring. |
| Christopher Erwin | Auckland University of Technology | Breaking the Wall of Quantitative Intersectionality | Critial Race Theory holds that no individual can be identified by membership in a single group. Yet researchers still treat charcteristics such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) as independent, providing oversimplified and biased looks into the nuances of inequality in modern society. | I offer a regression-based approach that can be used to map the complex landscape of inequality in various contexts. These methods are powerful in quantifying outcome differentials across several simultaneous characteristics, including race, gender, sexual orientation, SES, etc. |
| Sherry Feng | The University of Auckland | Breaking the Wall of Bias in AI | Current information in our world contains gender bias aspects, and as we feed such data into growing AI systems, it also becomes bias. Not only shown in many real life examples. Some of the most popularly used AI language systems in research have shown to have "doctor" closer to "male". | Teach the AI to not be sexist by feeding in data that will reduce bias. |
| Matthew French | The University of Auckland | Breaking the Wall of Breast Cancer Treatment | Develop an efficient AI technique that can accurately map the breast tumour position between clinical positions, such as diagnostic prone and preoperative supine positions, to guide breast cancer treatment. Building upon the state-of-the-art AI techniques I developed during my Masters. | I propose a novel approach that combines AI with breast biomechanics simulation techniques. This approach will ensure the predictions align with known anatomical properties of the breast and significantly reduce computational time compared to traditional biomechanics-based approaches. |
| Vitor Geniselli da Silva | Riddet Institute, Massey University | Breaking the Wall of the Infant Microbiome | The human colon is colonised by a microbial community that greatly impacts our health. Diet is a key factor influencing colonic microbes. However, little is known about foods that nourish the colonic microbes of infants during weaning. Overcoming this limitation is crucial to promote health | Mathematical models can simulate the impact of foods on the colonic microbes of infants in a time and resource-efficient way, selecting foods for further investigation in the laboratory. This combined strategy accelerates the study of colonic microbes and infant nutrition |
| Lysea Haggie | The University of Auckland | Breaking the Wall of Brain and Body | Human movement is complex. How does activity in the brain and nervous system result in coordinated movement of the body? | Develop interdisciplinary computational models and motor control algorithms using neural networks based on the human nervous system. These neural networks can then be connected to musculoskeletal models to produce models of movement. |
| Jihwi Jang | University of Canterbury | Breaking the Wall of Nitrate Removal via Tree | Due to intensive agricultural activities, the importance of the water quality for drinking is increasing over time. Especially, high concentrations of nitrate can cause severe health problems such as cyanosis in infants. However, few studies address the bioremediation potential from nitrate leaching | Main forestry species radiata pine trees can provide better ecosystem services to ameliorate water quality amid nitrate pollution. Bioremediation of nitrate can provide new information and insight into radiata pine in agroforestry. Boron and Selenium can foster nitrate removal in radiata pine. |
| Krzysztof Maliszewski | University of Canterbury | Breaking the Wall of Medical Imaging Limits | Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an eye imaging method that can detect over 50 health problems, such as diabetes and cancer, early on. Despite its proven usefulness, OCT's underperforming image quality often prevents diagnosing diseases at stages enabling their halting or even reversal. | Our AI-powered software offers a unique, ultra-performing alternative to standard OCT image generation methods. Our images are free from quality-deteriorating distortions and show a few times smaller detail. This enables more precise and reliable image analysis aimed at disease detection. |
| Robyn May | The University of Auckland | Breaking the Wall of Newborn Digital Twins | Preterm birth before 37 weeks’ gestation and low birth-weight (<2500 g) globally affect ~30 million babies each year. These babies are at increased cardiovascular risk in adulthood; they also frequently suffer neonatal cardiovascular instability that remains challenging to treat. | Newborn digital twins are physics-based computational models of the cardiovascular system for newborns. These personalisable computer models simulate how the heart beats and how blood flows through the bodies of newborn babies, including the circulatory system unique to preterm babies. |
| Morehu McDonald | Te Wānanga o Aotearoa | Breaking the Wall of Genocide and Colonialism | Indigenous peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand and throughout the world continue to experience oppression, loss of lands, language and culture, and suffer trauma from negative socio-economic indicators such as health, education, housing, imprisonment, and poverty as a result of European Colonialism. | My solution to the problem is to begin a process of reframing the meaning and consequences of European Colonialism at a local and international level involving the United Nations, to be redefined as Cultural Genocide. Ralph Lemkin designed the United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Genocide. |
| Emily O'Riordan | Bodeker Scientific | Breaking the Wall of Extreme Weather Forecasting | Destructive extreme weather events can exhibit spatial structure which require forecasting on scales as small as tens of metres. To protect the population and economy in NZ, accurate forecasts at such hyperlocal scales are needed. Generating forecasts at such a scale remains prohibitively expensive. | I am designing a neural network (NN) which takes low-resolution (e.g. 10km^2) weather forecasts and output sub-grid-scale weather features. A two-way coupling between the NN and the operational forecasting models at MetService will provide a far less expensive forecast at a much higher resolution. |
| Brittany Park | The University of Auckland | Breaking the Wall of Elderly Surgical Recovery | Traditional risk prediction tools in emergency laparotomy focus on mortality. For some older surgical candidates, quality of life may be more important than longevity. Furthermore, older surgical candidates may have vastly different outcomes following EL based on underlying physiologic reserve. | Assessment of physiologic reserve in the context of EL surgery may consist of standardized frailty assessment, muscle strength measured as hand grip strength, and muscle mass reported by radiologists as part of the patient’s diagnostic scan- combined and entered into a digital app. |
| Tejesvi Patel | University of the South Pacific | Breaking the Wall of Infection Using PVP/TA | Bacterial and fungal infections of wounds. Warmer temperatures are beginning to have substantial impact on human health particularly with skin infections. Skin infections in diabetic patients are common due to high blood sugar levels weakening the immune system and prolonging healing. | Crosslinked PVP/TA hydrogels were loaded with an antifungal drug NYS. NYS loaded PVP/TA hydrogels were used to develop transdermal patches. These patches can be used in the treatment of skin infections due to the simultaneous release of TA which is antibacterial and a antifungal drug. |
| Debashree Roy | Riddet Institute, Massey University | Breaking the Wall of Plant-based Cheeses | Lack of protein is a major nutritional concern in plant-based cheeses. Addition of plant proteins into vegan cheeses results in impaired functionality and taste. A major scientific and technological challenge is to simultaneously deliver nutrition, taste, and texture in this product category. | We have developed a novel patented process that allows the manufacturing of a highly concentrated plant protein base, which can be converted into a range of high-protein plant-based cheeses, ranging from soft, flexible, and sliceable, to shreddable, hard textured cheeses with exceptional properties. |
| Reeha Sharma | University of the South Pacific | Breaking the Wall of Plastic Based Pollution | To solve the issue of environment pollution caused by non-biodegradable plastic by creating plastics using natural polymers which are biodegradable and biocompatible. Also, address health issues of people suffering from gluten intolerance by using locally available products such as cassava flour. | Cassava starch is a natural polymer which is locally available and is biodegradable and biocompatible polymer. It has film forming ability which can be blended with other natural polymer to create a bio plastic. Also, the by-product which is the cassava flour can be used to make gluten free noodles. |
| Jildou van der werf | University of Otago | Breaking the Wall of Personalised Cancer Treatment | There are new options available for treatment of colorectal cancer (CRC) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) with far lesser side effects than current standard treatments, like chemoradiation therapy. However, responsiveness amongst individuals varies greatly, with no identified markers. | We propose that a certain common genetic variation can alter responsiveness of these new treatments by means of influencing immune cell functioning, and may help target the right treatments to the right patients. If true, this may lead to more effective treatment of IBD and CRC. |
| Shallu Verma | University of Canterbury | Breaking the Wall of Illicit Drugs Analysis | For the drug analyses, the frequently used analytical techniques are GC-MS, HPLC-UV and IR. But, these techniques come with several drawbacks- high cost, big space, time consumption, reference standards, calibration curves. Also, Novel Physcoactive Substances can't be analysed using these methods. | Benchtop NMR in conjunction with Quantum mechanical software can overcome the drawbacks. The instrument is compact and cost-effective, can analyse new drugs without using calibration curves & reference standards. QM can make spectral analysis simple by simultaneous identification & quantification. |
| Savindi Wijenayaka | The University of Auckland | Breaking the Wall of Gut Microstructures | Digestive disorders in the upper GI sphincters are prevalent worldwide. Understanding the complex musculature in these sphincters is essential for diagnosing and treating these conditions. Current imaging methods provide limited information, necessitating advancements for a better understanding. | Develop protocols for efficient imaging of GI sphincters using novel imaging techniques, automate segmentation process using deep learning, analyse tissue and fibre arrangements, and develop computational models to improve understanding of GI disorders and to benefit in silico experiments. |