The Research Trust of Victoria University of Wellington funded Research Programmes

The software systems that drive the world’s economy are not built from scratch. More than 90% of enterprises worldwide use proprietary and opensource third-party components (such as libraries and modules) and build-and-deployment services to achieve economies of scale. These components have their own dependencies, which results in complex and vulnerable software supply chains. Exploiting vulnerabilities is the most common form of initial cybersecurity attack – one in five vulnerabilities is exploited within 48 hours.

Recent global incidents (such as log4shell and solarwinds) and domestic incidents (such as the Waikato DHB ransomware attack) demonstrate how software supply chain security weaknesses can be exploited and the significant economic damage that can result. These incidents have led to an international political response including the 2023 US National Cybersecurity Strategy, new initiatives including Supply chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA), and software bills of materials (SBOMs).

Compliance with these policies, regulations and initiatives will shape the global software industry for years, creating risks and opportunities. New industries are emerging providing build-as-a-service (BaaS) and software composition analysis (SCA) services. These technologies are in their infancy, however, and our research shows they have significant shortcomings in their accuracy and scalability.

Our research programme has two complementary workstreams that will develop and evaluate resilient software supply chain solutions for real-world environments:

• A technical workstream will develop new technologies to detect vulnerabilities in software supply-chain components, processes and datasets. Our approach will be data-driven and use state-of-the-art AI techniques.
• An empirical workstream will interrogate practices in New Zealand's software industry, identifying shortcomings and opportunities to improve. This will include the generation and management of SBOMs, and compliance to emerging regulations and practices.

Alcoholic beverages are falling out of favour as social attitudes pivot towards health-conscious and socially responsible lifestyles. Non-alcoholic options are in huge demand and are growing exponentially in sales. This growing market is a huge opportunity for Aotearoa New Zealand’s NZ$7B wine and beer industry.

Recent technological advances are starting to produce non-alcoholic beers that are beginning to approach the quality of their alcoholic counterparts. However, current technologies are limited in range, expensive, and result in products with undesirable flavour attributes. The wine industry faces even greater challenges, calling for natural approaches to preserving quality and complexity in dealcoholized products.

This research programme will generate indigenous yeasts and the technologies to produce non-alcoholic beer and wine with desirable characteristics, and without the drawbacks of existing methodologies. Drawing inspiration from Aotearoa’s unique terroir, this project will discover and curate indigenous wild yeast under a mātauranga Māori framework, providing the beverage industries with a high-value commercial resource to meet the world’s changing demand for beer and wine.

The University of Auckland, Waikato University and Victoria University of Wellington will work together to achieve the programme's objectives. Partnership with industry leaders including the Bragato Research Institute, Garage Project, leading NZ wineries, and yeast producers will keep this research endeavour in close alignment with industry interests. The methodologies developed here offer a more accessible, generalised means for small and large producers to create non-alcoholic beverages without compromising the subtle flavours that distinguish artisanal brews and vintages.

The spectre of collapsing ice shelves is raising concern about climate change impacts on Antarctica, the Ross Sea region and Aotearoa. Effective anticipation of impacts, however, requires a sophisticated assessment of their early warning signs. The recent, unexpected, and sharp decline in Antarctic sea-ice extent may be the most critical signpost indicating rapid change is now imminent.

As sea ice around Antarctica recedes, heat absorption accelerates surface warming, destabilising ice shelves, leading to rapid and potentially unstoppable loss of up to one-third of Antarctica’s ice sheets, and resulting in multi-meter, global sea-level rise. Moreover, sea-ice loss weakens global ocean circulation, impacting heat distribution, decreasing ocean carbon storage, and reducing nutrient supplies that currently support 75% of global ocean primary production. As the Antarctic contracts, the tropics expand with increased heatwaves, atmospheric rivers, and ex-tropical cyclones - impacting Aotearoa.

The Antarctic Sea-Ice Switch (ASIS) Programme aims to understand recent abrupt changes in sea ice. We will improve models of future trends to forecast impacts on global climate, sea-level change, as well as the structure and function of ecosystems in the Ross Sea region Marine Protected Area.

ASIS will provide insights to facilitate adaptation to unavoidable change and identify additional impacts to expect if we cannot curb carbon emissions. Timely knowledge of the most harmful but avoidable impacts will incentivise the drive to net zero 2050, while helping to provide tangible solutions. Guided by the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, we build on established partnerships with Māori (i.e. Antarctic Science Platform, Our Changing Coast) to grow resilience for Aotearoa and Antarctica.

In the future, high-performance computing, including superconducting and quantum computing, will be undertaken at very cold [‘cryogenic’] temperatures. Such computers will be very much faster than today’s supercomputers [like the difference between a Ferrari and an e-scooter] – but where the Ferrari computer will need only a tiny fraction of the energy to run as today’s supercomputers. High-performance computers are not yet a reality because cryogenic memory technology they require has not been developed. In this research programme, using our team’s expertise in a class of advanced materials known as rare-earth nitrides, we will build prototypes of the cryogenic memory arrays required for the high-performance computers of the future. Rare-earth nitrides have remarkable properties: unlike other materials, they have tuneable magnetic and electrical characteristics. As the effort to build high-performance computing systems gains momentum over the next decade, this technology will become more and more valuable. By the end of the research programme, we will establish a pilot manufacturing line for cryogenic memory, leading to prototype manufacture of memory arrays. We will integrate our arrays with cryogenic logic circuits supplied by our implementation partner in the US, giving us a way to enter the valuable US market. New Zealand technology companies, as well as Kiwi engineering and manufacturing firms, will be involved in our production line. They will be able to access international customers and take part in supplying export customers with the products we have jointly developed. New, highly skilled, well-paid jobs will be created, and investment will flow into New Zealand companies in the global superconducting electronics business.

Ngā Ngaru Wakapuke, gifted by Te Ātiawa, represents the waves created by movement of the landscape beneath Raukawakawa Moana (Cook Strait), that creates impact on people (tāngata) and land (whenua). The Transition Zone (TZ) spans the lower North and upper South Island, and is home to our largest sources of earthquake risk, including the Alpine Fault and Hikurangi Subduction Zone. Currently, we know very little about how these major fault systems interact. There is a 75% probability of a major (>M8) earthquake on the plate boundary in the next 50 years. This could potentially trigger a cluster of major earthquakes over years or decades, causing on-going disruption to communities.

Working in collaboration with communities and iwi, we co-design scenario narratives that create a shared vision of transition through on-going seismicity. We develop a risk-informed evidence base, starting with an advanced understanding of the 3-D sub-surface architecture of the Transition Zone, to understand how faults interact. We couple this with evidence of past earthquakes, revealed through analysing lake sediment records that paint a picture of earthquake activity thousands of years in the past. Together, these data validate computer simulations of earthquake processes that will dramatically improve our ability to forecast future earthquake sequences.

These hazard forecasts will inform assessments of how risk and socio-economic consequences evolve through time. Our research supports national-and regional resilience preparations, including stress-testing potential infrastructure investments, to help infrastructure providers develop business cases that will lead communities towards a more resilient future. Our research also contributes to national and regional level emergency management planning, enhancing our capacity to respond and recover, and enabling communities to improve their awareness and preparedness. Building resilience to future earthquake sequences.

Geothermal energy is an important natural, sustainable, low carbon resource for generating electricity in NZ. We have discovered a transformational chemical and engineering technology (CaSil technology), to recover 60-100% more heat energy for electricity generation and industry/consumer direct heating applications, from hot separated water flows in existing and new geothermal plants.

We achieve this by solving the major worldwide problem of silica deposition as an intractable sinter from the hot water in geothermal resource utilisation, which blocks pipework, heat exchangers and reinjection wells, severely limiting the amount of heat energy that can be extracted and electricity generated by the binary cycle technology.

Our innovative technology captures and rapidly transforms silica in geothermal water into a unique nanostructured calcium silicate (CaSil) material before silica deposition takes place. The CaSil does not adhere to metal surfaces and is separated as a useful product for environmentally beneficial and water restoration applications.

We will use the CaSil product to manufacture CaSil-based controlled-release fertilisers, providing more effective fertiliser use and reducing excess nutrient run-off and pollution of waterways.

Our research will deliver a transformational technology that successfully addresses Climate Change mitigation and Clean Water restoration.

New revenue streams will be generated from the additional electricity generated, reduced eothermal field and equipment maintenance, and from CaSil fertilisers.

The technology is applicable to New Zealand and international geothermal resource utilisation for electricity generation.

We know the sea around Aotearoa is rising and that our coastal communities must adapt, but we do not yet know enough about how our coastal regions will be affected by sea-level rise (SLR) to ensure our adaptation measures are effective and appropriate. We do not yet know how hazards will evolve and shift risk along our >15,000 km of highly variable coastline. Addressing these critical knowledge gaps, requires coordinated effort between Iwi, Māori, researchers, government agencies, private sector, and community groups.

Te Ao Hurihuri: Te Ao Hou, Our Changing Coast (OCC) programme offers novel insight into our evolving coastal system and prepares planners, decision makers, and communities to address our coastal adaptation challenge. OCC directly supports New Zealand’s Climate Change Amendment Act and Climate Change Commission’s advice regarding pathways for a just transition to a low carbon economy by 2050. Our research interweaves threads of mātauranga-a-Māori, mātauranga-a-pūtaiao, and other science knowledge. Ka mua, ka muri: although we walk into the future our eyes remain on the past. We utilise knowledge from our past and the latest datasets and models to develop (1) a new suite of “state of the art” SLR projections, (2) tools to identify evolving coastal hazards, and (3) tools and decision-making procedures that manage risk, limit social disruption, and enhance equitable, sustainable, and healthier communities.

By the end of our programme we aim to ensure that New Zealanders are using the best scientific knowledge and evidence to effectively anticipate sea-level rise and its impacts, in order to develop and implement sustainable adaptation and management approaches guided by mātauranga Māori.

Satellites need on-board propulsion for orbital adjustments, orbital transfers, station keeping, attitude control systems, and decommissioning. Most satellites use chemical propellants to power thrusters for these manoeuvres. Electric propulsion, deriving energy from solar cells, is the most propellant-efficient technology but uses high power to achieve low thrust. Power requirements can be reduced by applying an external magnetic field to the system which increases the Lorentz force applied to the propellant ions. One type of such an augmented thruster is an Applied-Field (AF)-Magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thruster. We will develop applied field -MPD thrusters which make use of the low weight and high magnetic fields possible using superconductor coils. Our hypothesis is that using superconductor to access higher fields, we can produce higher thrust, higher specific impulse, and more efficient AF-MPD thrusters for a given mass. We will also investigate whether by using superconductors AF-MPD thrusters can effective at different scales, for application from nanosatellites to large satellites. We will build a prototype thruster and launch it to space on a test mission.

Benefits from the programme will be through the commercialisation of the thruster technology and related technology developed. High efficiency thrusters enable higher value satellite and spacecraft missions and enable more economical availability of data from space services giving benefits to end users of the data. The uses of satellite data are many: from environmental and hazard monitoring to national security, telecommunications, and asset management.