Search Marsden awards 2008–2017
Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: New Phosphors for White Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs)
Recipient(s): Dr SF Huang | PI | The University of Auckland
Associate Professor T Soehnel | AI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Phosphor-converted white light-emitting diodes (pc-WLEDs) are a new generation solid-state lighting (SSL) source. The majority of the current phosphors need ultraviolet (UV) or near ultraviolet (NUV) light for excitation. However, the excessive UV/NUV light from pc-WLEDs raises critical health concerns. One important approach for generating white light is using a blue-emitting chip to excite/pump a yellow-emitting phosphor. Based on recent advance, we believe that a new family of blue-excitable phosphates is arising for high-performance white LEDs. The mechanism, however, for the long-wavelength excitation of such phosphates has not yet been revealed.
The aims of this project are to unveil the origin of the observed excitation in the blue-light range and to develop new phosphors for the next-generation blue-pumped pc-WLEDs. The long-wavelength excitation mechanism will be investigated via a combination of experimental and computational approaches. To explore novel phosphors with tuneable emission wavelengths and a broad excitation band, we propose to use a solid solution approach in the targeted phosphate systems through a composition tailoring strategy. Understanding of the blue excitation mechanism will pave the way for the development of new blue-excitable phosphors.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Dr SF Huang
Panel: EIS
Project ID: 16-UOA-318
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: New players in protein recycling
Recipient(s): Professor SPA McCormick | PI | University of Otago
Dr T Kleffmann | AI | University of Otago
Dr GMI Redpath | AI | University of New South Wales
Public Summary: Twenty percent of people have high levels of a form of blood cholesterol called 'Lp(a)' which predisposes them to heart attacks. Lp(a) consists of a low density lipoprotein (LDL), otherwise known as the 'bad cholesterol' particle, with an additional protein called 'apo(a)' attached to it. Much is known about how Lp(a) causes heart attacks but less is known about how it is cleared from the blood. Even less is known about what its function is.
We recently discovered a new clearance pathway for Lp(a) that operates via a plasminogen receptor called 'PlgRKT'. This pathway leads to Lp(a) uptake by liver cells and subsequent recycling of the apo(a) component. Our research aims to characterise the newly identified Lp(a) uptake pathway and establish the function of apo(a) recycling. Since apo(a) is known to bind oxidised lipids, released from stressed or dying cells, and fibrin from the breakdown of blood clots, we hypothesise that the function of apo(a) recycling is to clear these toxic waste products from circulation. Our research will generate new knowledge about Lp(a), plasminogen receptors and protein recycling biology. The project will also lay the foundations for developing novel Lp(a)-lowering therapies.
Total Awarded: $957,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Professor SPA McCormick
Panel: BMS
Project ID: 17-UOO-081
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2010
Title: New robust solutions to the multivariate Behrens-Fisher problem
Recipient(s): Prof MJ Anderson | PI | Massey University
Prof KR Clarke | AI | Plymouth Marine Laboratory
Public Summary: Imagine sampling two communities of butterflies and asking: do they differ? Testing for a (mean) difference is not possible if one community is more variable than the other. For a single measurement (e.g. community diversity), this is ‘Behrens-Fisher’, one of the oldest problems in statistics. We will combine bootstrapping methods with distance-based tests, avoiding classical assumptions, to yield novel robust solutions to the multivariate (multi-species) Behrens-Fisher problem. This work will generate new possibilities for simultaneous inferences on means and variances in ecology. More broadly, it will crack current barriers to analysing any multivariate dataset where classical approaches fail.
Total Awarded: $461,166
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Prof MJ Anderson
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 10-MAU-062
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2011
Title: New roles for a neuronal serpin in the human immune system
Recipient(s): Assoc Prof NP Birch | PI | The University of Auckland
Prof PR Dunbar | AI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: Effective immune responses are dependent on cell migration. Key immune cells called T cells search out foreign organisms by constantly migrating around the body, stopping to meet other immune cells in immune tissues such as lymph nodes. T cell motility ensures they can make multiple contacts with antigen presenting cells (APCs) that “present” them with fragments of foreign organisms, called “antigens”. Once T cells recognise an antigen, their migratory behaviour changes dramatically. They stop crawling and remain in contact with the APC for several hours, forming a broad membrane contact zone called the immunological synapse, named to reflect functional homology with the neuronal synapse. This contact is crucial in initiating the activation and proliferation of the rare T cells that can recognise a particular microbial antigen. This project explores new ideas on how the movement and interactions of human T cells are regulated to enable an immune response. It focuses on a protease inhibitor called neuroserpin, a protein usually linked to neural function, that we have discovered is expressed in human T cells. It brings together scientists with expertise in immunology and neuroscience and leverages our knowledge on neuroserpin function in the brain to explore new functions for neuroserpin in the human immune system.
Total Awarded: $778,261
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Assoc Prof NP Birch
Panel: BMS
Project ID: 11-UOA-200
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: New tools for statistical inference for network-based transportation models
Recipient(s): Prof M Hazelton | PI | Massey University
Prof DP Watling | AI | University of Leeds
Public Summary: Network-based models of road traffic systems underpin a vast array of transport management and planning activities. In practice they must be calibrated for the traffic system under consideration, giving rise to a wide range of statistical inference problems.
The most readily available type of data for fitting transport models comprises traffic counts on a set of network links. However, these do not uniquely determine the route flows, leading to a statistical linear inverse problem structure. By focusing on this common structure, our aim is to develop improved tools for inference with wide applicability in transportation science.
Total Awarded: $275,556
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Prof M Hazelton
Panel: MIS
Project ID: 08-MAU-015
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2010
Title: New views from old soils: testing the reconstruction of environmental and climatic change using genetic signals preserved in buried paleosols
Recipient(s): Prof DJ Lowe | PI | University of Waikato
Dr GJ Churchman | AI | The University of Adelaide
Prof AJ Cooper | AI | The University of Adelaide
Public Summary: The North Island has huge stores of buried soils (paleosols) developed on sequences of precisely-dated volcanic-ash layers (tephras). This unique series of dated paleosols provides a valuable paleobiological laboratory for ancient-DNA (aDNA) analysis of past populations and environments. Our aim is to recover past genetic records from stratigraphic successions of paleosols formed on tephras of known age in order to evaluate the potential of aDNA to provide reconstructions of environmental and climatic change over the past ~25,000 years. We hypothesise that aDNA (along with organic carbon) is preserved by its association with the nanomineral allophane that forms via weathering on well-drained tephras. We will use a range of new analytical tools including a synchrotron to address two critical issues. Firstly, we will examine where and how organic carbon/aDNA is held on allophane (and other clays) in tephra-derived soils, and establish how it is protected. Secondly, we will determine the extent of DNA mobility in different tephra-derived soils and paleosols using genetic markers. We will combine a unique New Zealand resource with a novel cross-disciplinary approach to reveal the reliability and utility of DNA to reconstruct past environments, and provide a valuable new scientific resource for New Zealand and internationally.
Total Awarded: $717,391
Duration: 3
Host: University of Waikato
Contact Person: Prof DJ Lowe
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 10-UOW-056
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2013
Title: New Zealand Bill of Rights Act under the microscope
Recipient(s): Professor C Geiringer | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Public Summary: Is the NZ Bill of Rights Act fit for purpose? More than two decades following its enactment, there is a considerable body of legislative, executive and judicial practice under the Act to enable its performance to be evaluated, but no comprehensive study yet exists. I will conduct a systematic examination of the Act's record of performance and, in doing so, test academic accounts that suggest that the Act (an 'ordinary law' bill of rights) has delivered us many of the advantages of a supreme law bill of rights. Is that so? Or has it fallen short and, if so, in what ways?
Total Awarded: $504,348
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Professor C Geiringer
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 13-VUW-196
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2015
Title: New Zealand's civil war
Recipient(s): Professor MP Belgrave | PI | Massey University
Mr PN Meihana | AI | Massey University
Public Summary: The wars of the 1860s followed two decades of dramatic change in New Zealand, the establishment of a colonial government, new settler towns and the development of new if sometimes precarious economies. This project will re-evaluate the world between Waitangi and the invasion of the Waikato. It will focus on the exchange of new ideas between Maori and non-Maori and between Maori and Maori across the country, exploring the extent to which a civil society was created or imagined which transcended the scattered European settlements and different iwi, allowing the wars of the 1860s to be seen as civil wars. Using an approach from the New Imperial History, the research will explore the way new ideas were adopted and adapted through personal relationships. It will examine the impact of these ideas on existing customary relationships in exploring the way that personal connections gave Maori access to networks of ideas, networks of mana and status. Drawing on newly available digital sources, the research will explore the extent that these relationships helped form a civil society and examine the stress on this society caused by economic change, increasing loss of land, government land purchase policies and self-government which excluded Maori participation.
Total Awarded: $580,000
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Professor MP Belgrave
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 15-MAU-066
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: New Zealand's floral origins and the Oligocene land crisis
Recipient(s): Dr DC Mildenhall | PI | GNS Science
Dr N Mortimer | PI | GNS Science
Prof DJ Cantrill | AI | Royal Botanic Gardens
Dr MJ Isaac | AI | GNS Science
Dr EM Kennedy | AI | GNS Science
Dr M Knapp | AI | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Dr DE Lee | AI | University of Otago
Dr KM Marsaglia | AI | California State University
Ms JA Palmer | AI | Massey University
Public Summary: This project will investigate the controversial Oligocene land crisis, an understanding of which is critical to explaining the origins of New Zealand's (NZ) flora, and to international debate on the mechanisms and timing of plant dispersal. Although it is generally recognised that the NZ continent (Zealandia) achieved maximum submergence during the Oligocene (34-24 million years ago) there is dispute over how much land, if any, existed during this time. Does the NZ flora today have Gondwanan elements that survived through the Oligocene on islands, or were they extinguished by total drowning, leaving a clean slate for long-distance recolonisation after re-emergence?
Total Awarded: $813,333
Duration: 3
Host: GNS Science
Contact Person: Dr DC Mildenhall
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 08-GNS-016
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: New Zealand's megaherbivores: resolving their ecological role and the impact of their extinction on the flora
Recipient(s): Dr JR Wood | PI | Landcare Research
Prof A Cooper | PI | The University of Adelaide
Dr J Wilmshurst | PI | Landcare Research
Mr TH Worthy | PI | The University of Adelaide
Public Summary: We will establish the first detailed picture of the interactions between an extinct megafauna and their ecosystem anywhere in the world. Recently discovered avian coprolite deposits in caves and rock-shelters will be used to produce detailed dietary interpretations for a range of New Zealand's extinct avian herbivores (including several species of moa, Finsch's duck, and South Island goose) based on ancient DNA, macrofossil and microfossil analyses. We will also produce high-resolution pollen and coprophilous-fungal spore stratigraphies from forest soils across New Zealand to examine how the composition of forest understoreys responded to the extinctions of New Zealand's avian megaherbivores.
Total Awarded: $682,667
Duration: 3
Host: Landcare Research
Contact Person: Dr JR Wood
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 08-LCR-012