Search Marsden awards 2008–2017
Search awarded Marsden Fund grants 2008–2017
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: PilVax: a novel peptide delivery strategy for the development of vaccines
Recipient(s): Associate Professor TK Proft | PI | The University of Auckland
Dr RA Kemp | AI | University of Otago
Dr JR Kirman | AI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Vaccine development has progressed from killed/attenuated microorganisms to subunit vaccines based on individual proteins or peptides. However, peptides are often poorly immunogenic and require administration with potentially toxic adjuvants or amplified peptides. We propose to develop a novel peptide delivery system by expressing antigens within the Streptococcus pyogenes pilus on the surface of Lactococcus lactis. This will have several advantages, including increased peptide stability (rigid pilus structure), biocompatibility (no synthetic peptide carriers and adjuvants), and time/cost effectiveness (no chemical coupling). We will focus on a vaccine against an important infectious disease (tuberculosis) and an anti-tumour vaccine (colorectal cancer).
Total Awarded: $825,000
Duration: 3
Host: The University of Auckland
Contact Person: Associate Professor TK Proft
Panel: BMS
Project ID: 16-UOA-016
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Planting the Soil and Panning for Gold: Exploring the dynamics of colonial life in Otago
Recipient(s): Dr CL King | PI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Processes of immigration are central to New Zealand national identity and were as important in the past as they are today. The first European settlers flocked to Otago to begin new lives as farmers, leaders of industry or to strike it rich in the goldfields. These people’s individual stories are largely missing from the historical record, which tends to gloss over them in favour of creating state-sponsored narratives. Following the recent excavation of the historic cemetery site of St John’s Milton, however, it is now possible to reconstruct the lives of these early southern European settlers using bioarchaeological techniques. For the first time in New Zealand, cutting-edge isotopic techniques will be applied to settler remains to track changes in mobility, diet and health through their lives. In doing so this project will evaluate whether these first European New Zealanders achieved the better lives they left their homelands for. It will compare the biological histories of the settlers with the historical record in Europe and New Zealand to build a holistic picture of processes of empire-building, adaptation and what it means to be a Pākehā New Zealander.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr CL King
Panel: EHB
Project ID: 17-UOO-149
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Fast-Start
Year Awarded: 2011
Title: Plastic genomes: does genome structure facilitate phenotypic plasticity?
Recipient(s): Dr EJ Duncan | PI | University of Otago
Assoc Prof PK Dearden | AI | University of Otago
Public Summary: The environment animals experience can affect the way they look and behave– this is called phenotypic plasticity. Phenotypic plasticity is important in many animals, including humans. In humans, the environment you encounter as a fetus may determine how susceptible you are to type II diabetes and heart disease, diseases that don’t affect you until you are 40 or 50 years old! In other animals, such as aphids, the environment can change the way they reproduce. Aphids can switch between sexual and asexual reproduction and this is partly why they are successful pests - reproducing without sex means that they can have a lot more children quickly. The environment interacting with our DNA brings about all these biological changes. But how does this happen? We think that the DNA is organized within the cell in such a way as to help an animal’s ability to respond to the environment. We propose to look at the way that the DNA is organized in sexual and asexual pea aphids. We hope what we discover in aphids will give us insight into how DNA responds to the environment in other animals, including humans.
Total Awarded: $300,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Dr EJ Duncan
Panel: CMP
Project ID: 11-UOO-124
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Plasticity or Adaptation: Evolution of Thermal Performance in New Zealand Stick Insects
Recipient(s): Associate Professor TR Buckley | PI | Landcare Research
Dr HE Roberts | AI | Landcare Research
Associate Professor BJ Sinclair | AI | University of Western Ontario
Public Summary: Temperature is critical in governing the distribution of plants and animals. All species possess adaptations that allow them to flourish under a given temperature regime – their thermal performance. However, when a species inhabiting a warm and stable environment colonizes a variable temperate environment, will it shift its thermal performance or rely on inherent plasticity? This fundamental question must be resolved to advance our ability to understand and predict the evolution and spread of species over time. We will look for an answer by exploring the physiology and genomics of New Zealand stick insects and their tropical relatives. First, we will determine whether species in cool environments have shifted their thermal performance compared to their tropical relatives, and if they do this using plasticity or resilient physiology. Then we will determine how stick insects change their thermal performance via gene expression. Finally, we will break new ground by determining whether stick insects regulate their thermal performance by making non-permanent changes to their genome – a process called epigenetics. Together, this study will explain how tropical stick insects managed to expand across New Zealand, and shed light on how plants and animals evolve to occupy new environments.
Total Awarded: $925,000
Duration: 3
Host: Landcare Research
Contact Person: Associate Professor TR Buckley
Panel: EEB
Project ID: 17-LCR-002
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2010
Title: Platinum stable isotope tracing of the accretion and differentiation of the Earth and evolution of its oceans and atmosphere
Recipient(s): Dr M Handler | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Prof JA Baker | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr VC Bennett | AI | Australian National University
Public Summary: Novel non-traditional stable isotopic systems developed over the last decade now underpin an exciting new analytical field that is revolutionising our ability to investigate processes as diverse as planetary formation, ocean chemistry and the interface between biology and minerals. Driven by small differences in isotope masses, a wide range of physiochemical and biological processes can produce now measurable changes in the stable isotope ratios of various metals (for example Fe, Mo, Cu, Zn, Cr, Tl). The platinum (Pt) stable isotope system represents a potentially powerful but as yet unexplored addition to this suite of tracers. Existing in several oxidation states in nature, and with affinities to metal and sulphur, this non-bioessential element has the potential to provide key insights into wide ranging global processes. We will for the first time develop the analytical techniques for Pt stable isotopes and, through analysis of meteorites, igneous rocks from Earth’s mantle and marine sediments, apply the system to test two fundamental questions. First, did a late veneer of meteoritic material accrete to the Earth after formation of its core? Second, how do Pt isotopes track variations in ocean chemistry and, in particular, oxygenation of the ocean-atmosphere system through Earth’s history?
Total Awarded: $721,739
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Dr M Handler
Panel: ESA
Project ID: 10-VUW-161
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2016
Title: Playing dice with Fermi: Full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo for fermionic superfluids
Recipient(s): Professor J Brand | PI | Massey University
Professor A Alavi | AI | Massey University
Professor MW Zwierlein | AI | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Public Summary: Can a computer game of walkers who randomly die, give birth, and jump between locations help us understand the physics of ultra-cold atomic gases? A new Monte Carlo method (FCIQMC) has the potential to do just that. It has recently extended the applicability of exact numerical computations to larger and larger problems in quantum chemistry. In this project we will further develop the FCIQMC approach to study a new form of quantum matter - the strongly interacting Fermi gas.
Laser cooling fermionic atoms to temperatures near absolute zero creates a superfluid with universal properties. Yet these properties are poorly understood and seemingly intractable for theoretical physics. Strong interactions make approximate theories unreliable. Indeed, experiments have not been able to verify predictions for the simultaneous occurrence of superfluid flow and periodic order in space, akin to a crystal. FCIQMC has the potential to provide definitive answers to theoretical questions and guide experimental efforts. This NZ-led international collaboration will refine approximate theories based on numerical computations and experiments performed in parallel. Understanding the universal aspects of the strongly interacting Fermi gas will provide important insights into the properties of materials occurring in neutron stars, as well as exotic superconductors.
Total Awarded: $870,000
Duration: 3
Host: Massey University
Contact Person: Professor J Brand
Panel: PCB
Project ID: 16-MAU-073
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2010
Title: Playing with reality? Online documentary culture and its users
Recipient(s): Dr C Hight | PI | University of Waikato
Assoc Prof R Harindranath | AI | University of Melbourne
Public Summary: Outside of the institutional constraints and professional practices which still govern documentary production in film and television, online users appear to be drawing upon the full range of familiar modes of media presentation, often in playful ‘mashups’ that mix factual evidence with personal expression, autobiography, performance, and impassioned rhetoric. This project will investigate the creation and interpretation of such short-form audio-visual documentary-related material by online users. Despite a growing literature on documentary, particularly on the nature and significance of recent television ‘hybrid’ forms popularly known as ‘reality TV’, there are relatively few empirical studies which address the complexities of audience responses to the full breadth of documentary and reality-based media. The need for audience research into documentary culture has increased with the growth of digital media which provide the means for users (audiences) to engage directly in the creation and exchange of documentary-related material. Our research focuses on New Zealand users within the broader Australian context. This qualitative research will integrate analysis of software employed by users, analysis of a digital archive of online material, and audience research into the producers and users of such material.
Total Awarded: $384,417
Duration: 3
Host: University of Waikato
Contact Person: Dr C Hight
Panel: SOC
Project ID: 10-UOW-020
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2008
Title: Policing indigenous peoples: a comparative approach to controlling colonies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Recipient(s): Prof RS Hill | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Public Summary: This project will research and produce a comparative, book-length analysis of policing the indigenous peoples of empire, the first such study in the world. It was mostly the police (rather than the military) which controlled colonial populations, often in heavily coercive fashion. Colonial administrations borrowed techniques from each other, so that imperial policing was, in effect, globalised. But each colony posed its own particular problems. This research will analyse, through examining primary and secondary sources, the interaction between global and local in controlling colonies, and will throw light on the many consequences of colonial policing in today's world.
Total Awarded: $542,222
Duration: 3
Host: Victoria University of Wellington
Contact Person: Prof RS Hill
Panel: HUM
Project ID: 08-VUW-001
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Political gaming: using economic games to explore the foundations of political ideology
Recipient(s): Associate Professor QD Atkinson | PI | University of Auckland
Professor A Chaudhuri | PI | University of Auckland
Professor CG Sibley | AI | The University of Auckland
Public Summary: What determines our views on taxation and welfare, crime and healthcare, military spending and climate change? And why do opinions about these seemingly disparate aspects of our social lives coalesce the way they do? There is growing evidence that political attitudes and values reflect enduring individual differences along two ideological dimensions, one expressing a desire for group conformity versus individual autonomy, and another a desire for social dominance versus cooperation. In this project, we will test the possibility this ideological variation is shaped by two corresponding human social drives manifest in behavioural economics – the drive to punish those who violate group norms and the drive to cooperate even at personal cost. Using validated economic games and survey measures from New Zealand and urban and rural Vanuatu we will systematically investigate a) whether general patterns of social behaviour predict political ideology, and b) whether these relationships hold across societies that differ markedly in scale, market integration and cultural background. This work, which is unique in ambition and scope, promises new insight into why people hold the political beliefs they do and how culture and basic human social drives interact to shape the politics that both unites and divides us.
Total Awarded: $835,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Auckland
Contact Person: Associate Professor QD Atkinson
Panel: EHB
Project ID: 17-UOA-074
Fund Type: Marsden Fund
Category: Standard
Year Awarded: 2017
Title: Polymer-Immobilized Carbon Monoxide Donors: Agents for Tissue Protection
Recipient(s): Professor DS Larsen | PI | University of Otago
Associate Professor IA Sammut | PI | University of Otago
Dr JC Harrison | AI | University of Otago
Public Summary: Once viewed as a “silent killer” through its binding to haemoglobin, carbon monoxide (CO) is now accepted as a cyto-protective molecule with multiple important physiological signalling roles. However, the complexity of controlling low dose CO gas delivery in a clinical setting, combined with the hazardous consequences of any gas leak, have been acknowledged as significant impediments for its use in gaseous form. CO-releasing molecules (CORMs) provide a much safer alternative as administration of the therapeutic dose can be closely controlled. Most CORMs are small molecule transition-metal carbonyl complexes that have shown beneficial effects but have inherent toxicities prohibiting human applications. We have recently developed a novel small molecule, metal-free, organic class of CORMs that shows valuable promise as an additive in organ/tissue transplant solutions, and as a prophylactic in heart bypass surgical applications. Using our technology we will develop these compounds further for human applications by immobilising them onto polymer supports to overcome problems with cellular toxicity and aqueous solubility. Our polymers are designed for ease of use by improving solubility in biological media, and by delivering clinically relevant CO-release profiles. Additionally, synthesising polymers with trackable markers will help answer fundamental controversies surrounding the mechanism of action of CORMs.
Total Awarded: $910,000
Duration: 3
Host: University of Otago
Contact Person: Professor DS Larsen
Panel: PCB
Project ID: 17-UOO-222