Endeavour Fund: Successful 2023 Smart Ideas

While it’s an exciting time for cellular agriculture there are still major challenges to overcome. The biggest barriers are the cost of large-scale manufacture including the use of food-grade growth media, loss of cell lines due to biological contamination and high requirements for food safety testing. To date, no large-scale cost-effective technology is available to maintain sterility for cell-based protein manufacture nor an on-line monitoring system to detect changes in quality and safety.

Our research proposes to plasma activate cell cultures and/or media used during the manufacture of cell-based protein foods, thus removing any requirement for antibiotics to maintain sterility. Further, we will develop a real-time sterility monitoring system based on hyperspectral imaging and machine learning to rapidly identify microbes either directly or indirectly via changes in media composition associated with biological contamination. The science challenge will be to; (i) understand the cold plasma chemistry required to inactivate microbes while maintaining cell line integrity and (ii) unravel subtle changes in media composition during the initial stages of microbial growth within complex hyperspectral datasets. This will enable rapid detection and response to contamination in real-time.

The research will result in the development of new knowledge, IP, and technologies that can significantly enhance the sustainability, safety, and ethical appeal of emerging NZ cellular agricultural companies. Furthermore, the research will generate new insights into cold plasma chemistries that are essential for the inactivation of microbes, with potential applications in the food, veterinary, and health industries, where microbial disinfection is crucial. Additionally, the improved algorithms, digital data pipelines, and supporting languages for data processing, and modelling will have a significant impact on the adoption of hyperspectral imaging monitoring systems in diverse applications.

Fresh seafood is notorious for its very short shelf life and spoils quickly. Besides food wastage and associated greenhouse gas emissions, this can also lead to serious food-borne diseases. To protect the worldwide reputation of New Zealand’s seafood sector, uphold seafood quality and further reduce waste, it is important to monitor seafood freshness.

Existing solutions have challenges, for example, sensor integration with thin and flexible packaging materials and end-of-life e-waste/pollution issues. Our research will enable a novel sensor concept to detect volatile amines based on a fully biodegradable chipless RFID tag. Our real-time monitoring system can prevent the consumption of spoiled food, providing information during the early stages of decay and enabling countermeasures to prevent fresh seafood from becoming food waste.

We will design functional polymer composites to sense volatile amines and print a passive chipless RFID tag directly on the polymer composite substrate. The main scientific stretch and the technological challenge is controlling the polymer composite structure to sense volatile amines and then produce a detectable change in electrical properties. This can be translated by a chipless RFID antenna pattern into the shift of resonant frequency, upon receiving the interrogation signal from an RFID reader.

We have identified three industry sectors that will benefit directly from the early adoption of biodegradable chipless RFID tags: food supply-chain management, where the proposed tag can sense vapours from fruits, vegetables, and seafood; toxic gas detection in chemical plants, and oxygen detection for worker safety. Successful execution of our research project will enable a new class of fully biodegradable chipless RFID sensors with the potential to disrupt a multibillion-dollar market.

Gas-driven volcanic eruptions are short-lived (seconds to minutes) explosions that occur with little warning. Like a kettle on a stove, when the pressure of the gas overcomes the strength of the lid, or mineral seal, an eruption occurs. These gas-driven events are the most common type and size of eruption globally, yet we have little understanding of the underlying processes that drive them. This is important when we assess volcano monitoring data and seek to forecast the next eruption. In this work, we will use unique laboratory equipment that has been used successfully to test geothermal reservoir evolution, to replicate the high pressures and temperatures beneath Ruapehu. Based on these experiments, we will then be able to constrain the rates of mineral growth in volcanoes. We will be able to assess the effect of mineral growth, failure, and re-growth as a proxy for gas pressure build-up and then violent release. Aligned to the experimental work is a much closer analysis of rocks ejected during past gas-driven eruptions. By using very high-resolution microscopes, we will be able to assess the timescales of seal formation prior to gas-driven eruptions and then compare those results to historical monitoring data.

Knowledge gained through this work will be directly used to develop a new forecasting tool that provides probabilities and uncertainties of an eruption based on monitoring data. By bringing in expertise from the wider volcano science community, we will be able to start to provide quantitative forecasts of the next eruption, significantly building on previous work. The results of our work will provide unprecedented understanding of these highly dangerous eruptions and we hope this work will ultimately save lives and livelihoods.

We will develop a new way of protecting plants against fungal disease, by exposing plants to the inactivated variants of the disease-causing fungi. Fungal diseases can cause huge damage to crops, for example, in 2022 80% of New Zealand’s passionfruit crops was lost. The most common method of protecting crops against fungi is use of synthetic chemical sprays. However, legislation and consumers are increasingly demanding reductions in chemical residues and fungi are becoming resistant to synthetic fungicides, driving a search for more sustainable solutions.
 
Our novel approach will make fungi unable to cause disease by changing the bacteria that are associated with the fungi. We have discovered that the degree of disease which a fungus will cause in a plant is related to the bacteria living with the fungus. If you change the bacteria, it seems that you change whether a fungus can make a plant sick. We will test this concept by removing and changing the bacteria in a fungus that infects brassica plants, for example, broccoli, cabbage. We will coat seeds with the altered fungus, then try to infect the seedlings with the original fungus to see whether our new products have protected the plant from infection.
 
Our team from LAL, Scion, Utrecht University and the Foundation for Arable Research are experts in plant pathology, microbiology, next-generation sequencing, microscopy, mātauranga Māori and commercialisation of new horticultural products. We will trial our products in the field with horticulturalists and work with the agricultural products industry to commercialise our new approach. Such fungal bioprotectants will help protect NZ growers and also provide export revenue from an ongoing stream of new products designed to protect plants against disease-causing fungi.

To maintain the NZ$6.25 billion NZ forestry industry, 54 tonnes of copper fungicides are sprayed annually against pine pathogens. In addition to being a significant economic cost at NZ$57 million annually, their use also comes with potential environmental, human health and social costs.
  
We will investigate the use of microbial bioactive compounds (MBCs) to protect pine forests from filamentous plant pathogens. Can MBCs be used as sustainable and environmentally friendly agents that protect Pinus radiata from Dothistroma needle blight (DNB), red needle cast (RNC) and other diseases, delivering benefits to the NZ forestry economy? We have already identified 2 MBCs that can kill the causal agents of DNB and RNC in vitro and promoted pine growth in glasshouse conditions.
 
Our multidisciplinary and international team has combined expertise in forestry-based research, including plant pathology and biology, biocontrol product development, microbial bioactive compounds, plant defence, priming and bioinformatics. The programme incorporates strong links to the forestry industry.

Our project will develop products that enhance tree health and offer an alternative to agrichemicals to protect forests, reduce environmental costs and help mitigate climate change. Our products are anticipated to have high export potential with significant financial benefits to NZ.

Our world is changing faster and in ever more diverse ways – global records are being broken from droughts to floods, and in Aotearoa we have seen cataclysmic flooding, catastrophic volcanic eruptions, and the Canterbury earthquakes. An essential task in managing and adapting to our future is being able to forecast it. Science is trying to keep up with these changes, but current forecasting models require large amounts of information, and tend to focus only on one small part of a system (for example, the waterways, or the fault network). Environmental forecasts lack both sufficient data and knowledge to build reliable models. We, as scientists, are stuck.

We believe that the way out is by taking an all-inclusive approach, looking at the system as a whole, with parts intricately woven together. Such an approach is intrinsic to Mātauranga Maori which, moreover, provides for an alternative lens on what can be considered data, beyond instrumental readings. We know that adding more voices with alternate understandings leads to better, more transparent forecasts with accurate descriptions of uncertainty.

Our project provides robust forecasts of the future by combining adaptable statistical tools with the intrinsic Mātauranga of iwi. We start with a proof-of concept region – the Central Volcanic Plateau, and will build location-specific tools that will be realised with iwi that whakapapa to this region. Once proven, our methodologies can be directly transplanted to other localities within Aotearoa.

This research will build robust forecasts of our environmental future, and shift the conversation in Aotearoa away from “How can Mātauranga Māori be fitted into science?” and towards “What can science do to support Mātauranga Māori?”

The mining of phosphorus to produce fertiliser simultaneously depletes geostrategic reserves and costs billions to the economies relying on its import for agriculture. In addition, phosphorus must continuously be added to soils as it is lost via leaching and in the food chain. Phosphorus discharge causes excess microalgae growth in many aquatic environments. We propose an innovative and environmentally-friendly solution: using the same microalgae that causes eutrophication to recover and recycle phosphorus as high-value polyphosphates.

Dr Plouviez (Massey University) and his group have recently achieved considerable advances in understanding which genes are involved in polyphosphate synthesis in microalgae. These genes are involved in coding the enzymes that catalyse the conversion of phosphate into polyphosphate, however we still know very little about the enzymes themselves. This proposal will take advantage of our collaborations bridging knowledge on the genetics of polyphosphate and the expertise in molecular biology and biochemistry, to investigate the polyphosphate-related enzymes and their structural differences in microalgae specialised for different ecological niches. We will incorporate this new knowledge into innovative technologies that recover phosphorus from aquatic ecosystems, testing them under real-world conditions at the internationally-renowned NIWA microalgae-based wastewater treatment facility.

With the COVID-19 pandemic came the “port congestion pandemic”, where ships were forced to wait on anchor for weeks for port calls. This highlighted concerns where intense anchorage use becomes the global norm. Shipping is a desirable lower-emissions option for transporting freight, but port congestion is predicted to increase, with seaborne trade expected to quadruple by 2050. We have little understanding of how routine anchoring practices damage the coastal and marine environment, and undermine our climate resilience. We hypothesise that anchoring practices have detrimental impacts beyond their physical footprint, with implications for broader ecosystems, economies and people who rely on the health of the shallow coastal zone.

This project will deliver a complete characterisation of the footprint of ship anchoring by measuring physical, chemical, biological, ecological changes in case study anchorage sites around Aotearoa-NZ. We will document changes compared to control conditions, biodiversity and ecosystem function to calculate thresholds for impacted environments. Case studies will identify key variables that make marine environments more vulnerable to the impacts of anchoring (for example, high proportion of muddy sediment on seabed may result in prolonged resuspension and redistribution of sediments, and higher potential for carbon release). The distribution of key vulnerabilities will be delineated within case study regions and communicated via partners to other national port and harbour authorities. We will work with industry, manawhenua and local government councils in Aotearoa-NZ, with insights and analogues from global experts to co-develop an environmental framework for planning new or expanding anchorage zones to ensure vulnerable coastal regions are conserved. We aim to redesign anchoring practices under current and future port congestion scenarios to reduce anchoring requirements and develop alternative low impact solutions for the shipping industry.

Most of Aotearoa-New Zealand’s coastal shellfish and invertebrate habitats have been degraded by multiple stressors from the land and in the sea. Key stressors are the 11-fold increase in sedimentation rates and disturbance from bottom-fishing methods. Oceans are also warming and acidifying. At the top of the South Island/Te Tauihu, shellfisheries have recently collapsed with collateral habitats destroyed.

We hypothesise that rehabilitation and protection of habitats will deliver orders-of-magnitude net benefit in fisheries abundance (finfish, shellfish), enhancing cultural, economic, and environmental outcomes. Importantly, lost habitats provided refugia for juvenile fish, sequestered carbon and sediment and prevented seabed erosion.

Our Smart Idea is to use an interactive model-based approach to assess and demonstrate the relative benefits (cultural, economic) of a range of rehabilitation and protection scenarios designed specifically to engage iwi and stakeholders. To effect lasting change, bold and ambitious science is required. We will reconstruct the distribution of lost habitats, use forensic sediment tracing to determine which land-uses contribute sedimentation, and attempt to estimate the fate of carbon/sediment under different habitat rehabilitation scenarios. A novel Habitat and Environmental Socio-economic module for NIWA’s Nelson Bays ‘Atlantis’ Ecosystem Model will be constructed, to enable full-wellbeing accounting of scenarios.

Our team includes nationally and internationally recognised experts in ecosystem modelling, soil source tracing, and sediment biogeochemistry, supported by scientists from The Nature Conservancy, with international links in ecosystem-based management and rehabilitation. We will engage and collaborate with Kotahitanga mō Te Taiao Alliance iwi and stakeholders to understand their priorities and values around rehabilitation of the marine environment and the scenarios of greatest interest. For example tested scenarios may include retiring forestry on steep slopes, spatially managing bottom fishing and/or protecting and rehabilitating habitats.

We will develop a state-of-the-art snowmelt forecast system to enable more accurate and confident forecasts of river flow and alpine hazards across New Zealand. Forecast outputs will provide both national-scale context and local-scale detail, along with full quantification of uncertainty in the rate, volume and timing of snowmelt. Robust snowmelt forecasts will enable end-users in hazard, energy, agriculture, and tourism domains to better respond to rain-on-snow impacts on river flows and alpine hazards.

Snowmelt forecast will be generated through physics-based ensemble snow modelling that will assimilate newly developed satellite remote sensing products to quantify initial snow cover and depth. Cutting-edge ensemble numerical weather forecast data will be used as snow model input to provide robust uncertainty estimates. Hydrometeorological and snow data from high-elevation weather stations will be used to test the system, ensuring extreme snowmelt rates observed in historical records are well simulated. Given the sparse observation network and large area of New Zealand’s alpine domain, our system is ideally placed to provide a step-change in forecasting snowmelt processes with fine detail at a national scale.

The system will be implemented in NIWA’s operational multi-hazard forecasting system, ensuring forecasts are readily available to end-users and easily ingested into river flow and flood inundation models. The project will include case study catchments where we will test the methods and benefits of integrating snowmelt forecasts with existing river flow forecasts.

The project brings together a team of specialists from NIWA and Otago University supported by international experts in snow modelling and observation. A Project Advisory Group consisting of industry, Māori and government representatives will guide the research and ensure forecast outputs enable better end-user decision-making across New Zealand.

Copper and zinc are essential metals for life, but when concentrations become too high they can be toxic to aquatic organisms. Although naturally occurring, these metals are also incorporated into products widely used in our urban landscape, such as brake pads, tyres, piping and roofing. During heavy rain, worn debris from these are washed into our waterways, resulting in metal concentrations which often exceed water quality guidelines.

Contamination of our freshwaters is increasing as urbanization, mining, agriculture, forestry and climate change effects increase. Toxicity from these metals is contributing to reduced ecosystem health, degrading urban streams with reduced biodiversity and decreased mauri.

Can our native trees come to the rescue? Natural dissolved organic matter (DOM) originating from plants can reduce the toxicity of these metals by binding with them, decreasing their bioavailability. Preliminary research has shown DOM from pōhutukawa and mānuka leaves are highly effective at mitigating copper and zinc toxicity to some aquatic organisms. These are two of natures ‘organic carbon super-producers’, but are there others?

With the objective of avoiding retrofitting urban areas with costly hard engineering to minimise metal inputs to streams, this research is seeking to increase ecosystem health protection by proactively optimising DOM in waterways — using ‘super-producers' in streamside plantings and Green Infrastructure to reduce metal toxicity.

This research will screen plant materials (for example, leaves, bark and woodchips) characterising the DOM and developing relationships with toxicity mitigation to select high affinity and high DOM producing native species. Ecosystem protection will be verified using toxicity tests with selected taonga species (for example, kōura, kākahi or īnanga), generating data for water quality guidelines and the development of guidance for optimal plant selection in riparian and Green Infrastructure applications.

New Zealand is committed to drastically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. This includes methane (CH4) emissions from waste and agriculture. However, our ability to accurately measure current emissions, as well as to verify emission reductions, is currently not sufficient. We will develop new technology to measure CH4 emissions from waste and agriculture with great accuracy. Our techniques will be deployed at multiple sites across New Zealand, to assess and demonstrate the performance of the new technology. This will inform operators across the waste industry, as well as livestock farmers and industry developing mitigation techniques. Our method will improve our knowledge of local CH4 emissions, for example the localisation of CH4 emission hotspots and leaks. With this knowledge, operators are enabled to make better informed mitigation decisions, and to meet their emissions reduction targets.

Our technology will improve the reporting of local CH4 emissions. For example, we will quantify the CH4 emissions for specific waste treatment plants. This will also inform national reporting practices for greenhouse gas emissions. Our instruments can be equipped with sensors for other greenhouse gases. This will enable us to expand our observation portfolio beyond this project.

Having the capability to directly measure CH4 emissions will provide certainty on our emissions. This will reduce economic risk associated with the emissions trading scheme and it will empower us to manage mitigation.

This innovative project proposal aims to revolutionise fault detection on hides and skins, addressing a pressing issue faced by the New Zealand industry. Current practices result in significant revenue losses of up to $35 million annually due to intrinsic faults and defects in processed hides and skins which cause their downgrading and can only be identified at later stages, leading to increased costs, quality inconsistencies, and additional environmental burdens.

Our project's primary goal is to develop an early-stage fault detection system that can promptly identify faults and defects harnessing our expertise in deep-learning techniques and leather processing, in support of 2 critical advancements:

By analysing their unique spectral signatures in real-time we seek to significantly reduce costs and improve processing efficiency. This classification will enable the production of high-quality leather or valuable proteins for nutraceutical and biomaterial applications. These breakthroughs will provide competitive advantages in both domestic and global markets.

This ground-breaking approach challenges existing limitations, aiming to detect and analyse faults and adverse chemical characteristics in hides and skins prior to processing.

Our project not only addresses economic losses but also emphasises sustainable processing practices. By minimising chemical consumption during early stages and reducing replacements and disposal, we will enhance the industry's environmental footprint. Our commitment to sustainability drives commercial advantages while preserving natural resources.

Through this transformative project, LASRA envisions a NZ hide and skin processing industry that achieves unparalleled efficiency, consistent quality, and global competitiveness. We will collaborate with industry stakeholders, researchers, and technology providers to maximise the project's impact and benefits to shape the future of the hide and skin processing industry; fostering innovation, environmental stewardship and economic growth.

As communities around Aotearoa come to grips with the impacts of climate change and adverse weather conditions, they look to researchers, community leaders and decision-makers for guidance to help them move towards climate resilience. Some communities also look to ancestral knowledge, mātauranga Māori, for guidance and the right path forward. For researchers that seek to bring those two knowledge systems together, there is no technology available to support them.

The work Te Hiku Media proposes will be to explore a collaborative platform that will synthesise and analyse data in te reo Māori and NZ English using natural language processing (NLP) tools to support research, policy and strategy development for climate action. The project will leverage existing tools, including an accurate bilingual automatic speech transcription for te reo Māori and NZ English, and build new tools that will make working with te reo Māori data and mātauranga Māori easier and more effective. The project will focus on creating and finetuning language tools for climate change research and mātauranga Māori.

Leaders across our communities are being asked to make critical decisions with their teams of people expected to provide the best evidence to support those decisions. A platform that makes domain specific NLP tools and the resulting output accessible for those decision-makers in the community will be explored, getting the data and evidence into the hands of those that need it. Importantly, this project will remove barriers for the community to engage in research using te reo Māori ensuring that Māori knowledge and perspectives can be included.

For more information about the project, please email:

info@tehiku.co.nz

Lakes in Aotearoa-New Zealand are in crisis, with recent research showing that approximately 45% are in poor health. This poor health is directly linked to human-induced factors including nutrient and sediment run off, chemical pollutants, habitat modification and the non-native species introductions. With resources to restore and prevent further decline being limited, it is essential efforts are effectively targeted. However, current methods for assessing lake health are time-consuming, costly, and often only focus on water quality without an understanding of the wider lake system.
 
This project will enhance lake restoration by developing a DNA-based approach to rapidly identify the most harmful impacts while also detecting culturally significant organisms. Our new approach targets the lake sediments. All inputs into lakes and the DNA from organisms living in lakes eventually sink and combine to form sediment on the lakebed. Using cutting-edge molecular techniques, we will explore not only what lives in a lake but also how these organisms are functioning. This information will provide new insights into the pressures impacting a lake and will help guide effective lake restoration.
 
Our vision is to support better lake restoration outcomes by making it easy for the people to identify the causes of lake degradation with limited sampling and analysis effort. We want to create a user-friendly dashboard that distils complex data into helpful and practical insights that guide restoration, protection and management efforts. Our new approach will be developed in partnership with iwi and regional councils and central government to ensure it if fit-for-purpose. This new tool will position Aotearoa-New Zealand as a global leader in lake management and restoration and will support the reversal of our current lake health crisis.

Shellfish aquaculture production is rapidly growing worldwide and has been identified as one of the most environmentally sustainable sources of animal protein. Infectious diseases cost the global aquaculture industry more than NZ$10 billion every year and affect livelihoods. Climate change exacerbates disease outbreaks which are becoming more frequent and intense, constraining the expansion of shellfish production worldwide. A striking example is the Pacific oyster mortality syndrome driven by a virus that devastated the Pacific oyster industry globally, including in New Zealand where production was halved in 2010. With no therapeutic treatments the shellfish industry relies on selective breeding to mitigate disease. Despite being effective this approach may be slow to implement and hard to access. Recent research breakthroughs reveal the shellfish immune system can provide memory, opening the door to the use of vaccination, previously thought not to be possible in shellfish.

We will develop a vaccine to protect shellfish against diseases. Using the Pacific oyster and its virus as a model, we will propose a safe and cost-effective technology to protect young Pacific oysters on farms. The vaccine will be prepared using the classical protocol of virus inactivation. The research will examine the efficacy of a range of vaccines, administration routes, and immunisation on different oyster life stages will be performed. Co-designed with end-users, the experimental approach will test the best candidate vaccines in the lab and will be implemented rapidly under 'real life' conditions on farms.

Transferable to other species, the proposed technology will:

1. improve economic and social outcomes for NZ’s oyster aquaculture industry
2. open new perspectives for disease mitigation strategies to global shellfish aquaculture
3. greatly improve NZ preparedness for the next disease outbreak.

Climate change is driving more frequent harmful algal blooms. These events produce dangerous toxins that accumulate in freshwater and marine environments, adversely affecting shellfish aquaculture industries and community health. Current testing strategies are primarily restricted to industry, as they are expensive and require specialised processing, expertise, and equipment only available in modern laboratories. Places where the infrastructure for such testing is unavailable, for example in many Pacific Islands and Māori communities that traditionally harvest seafood, are most at risk. Sampling frequency, speed, and cost are areas for improvement in food-toxin testing.

We propose to develop a new kind of testing kit that uses biosensor technology (similar to lateral-flow tests) to detect the presence of toxins using a smartphone device. This approach would make seafood safety testing in the field simple and affordable, empowering a wider range of people to become involved in protecting their communities.
 
These developments will allow community groups, industry, and environmental agencies to increase testing capacity, especially where access to current testing methods is limited, and rapidly respond to toxin events, to avoid adverse health and economic impacts. Additionally, our work expands food testing beyond what is currently possible. For example, it could enable development of remote monitoring instruments for toxin levels in the sea, to be deployed on floating buoys near aquaculture farms to provide real-time data. Additional options include more affordable testing instruments with higher capacity, for Regional Councils and MPI, not only for marine algal-toxins but also for algal and cyanobacterial toxin testing in food, drinking water and recreational waterways. This will transform safeguarding the rapidly-expanding aquaculture industry as well as gatherers of kaimoana and mahinga kai throughout our coastlines and waterways.
 
Contact:

jack.hervey@cawthron.org.nz

A multidisciplinary collaborative team of experts from China, USA and Aotearoa-NZ will share, develop and enhance research efforts to develop a world-first 'artificial egg' prototype that mimics an insect egg, providing a novel way to rear egg parasitoids in vitro. Egg parasitoids lay their eggs insect other insects’ eggs, thereby killing the host. They are natural enemies of insect pests and can be used to reduce or eradicate such pests. The successful development of our technology will provide a cheaper, more efficient and sustainable means for mass producing egg parasitoids to use against invasive pest insects and will help accelerate the reduction/elimination of pesticide use. We will use the brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) and the Samurai wasp as our model system. This host-parasitoid system is of global importance and of high biosecurity relevance to Aotearoa-NZ.

We will use state-of-the-art imaging, analytical biochemistry and nano-engineering methods to determine the nutrient content profile, eggshell chemical composition and surface characteristics of BMSB eggs. With this information, we will recreate and encapsulate artificial BMSB eggs in biomaterials and use these artificial eggs to mass rear Samurai wasps in the laboratory.

The findings of our project will lead to significant advances in our understanding of in vitro rearing of egg parasitoids and the use of artificial host eggs to mass rear biological control agents as part of an integrated pest management approach. This project will also establish enduring collaborations between the three participating countries. The information and technology platform generated by this project is also expected to be transferable to a range of egg parasitoids of other potential biosecurity threats to Aotearoa-NZ’s primary industries and native state.

Our novel idea is to deter insect pests from eating crops by combining predatory bat ultrasounds to ‘push’ insects away from crops (putting speakers in fields), with smells that insects find attractive to ‘pull’ them away from crops (putting the scents adjacent to fields). In a world first, we will decipher how insects make decisions when faced with deterrents and attractants at the same time. This new knowledge will be useful beyond the project, in helping develop new ways of managing insect pests.

Our team from Plant & Food Research, Otago University, Japan, Australia and New Caledonia brings together skills in bioacoustics to study ultrasounds, neurophysiology to study insect brain responses, chemical ecology to understand insect attractants, technology to broadcast bat calls, and access to insects and sites for field trials. The Department of Conservation will work with our team and ensure our technology is deployed only in areas where endemic bats are not present. Opportunity is provided for 2 Māori students to develop their research skills and contribute towards securing cultural and social licence for our project.

The benefits from our new approach will be a reduction in agrichemical use to control insect pests, reduction of crop losses, and maintenance of markets for our primary products in the face of growing concerns about agrichemical usage. Our novel platform to decipher insects’ sensory perceptions will facilitate the screening and future development of tools to control present and future threats, protecting Aotearoa-NZ from insects that can harm our economy and the environment.

The New Zealand wine industry is a major contributor to our export earnings, a significant regional employer and a flagship industry for our international market image. The ‘Smart, adaptive rootstock project’ is aimed at advancing industry sustainability goals and increasing our collective respect for kaitiakitanga through the innovative use of novel grape rootstock varieties.

New Zealand wine grapes are typically grafted onto a rootstock to provide protection against phylloxera, a root pest which is found in all our grape-growing regions. The rootstocks used for this were developed from breeding efforts in Europe in the 1880s, a time when European viticulturists were facing catastrophic losses because of the arrival of this pest from America. Scientists at Plant & Food Research and the Bragato Research Institute have been researching the role that rootstocks play in controlling other insects as well, in particular sap-sucking insects that transmit damaging viruses throughout the vineyard. They’ve noted that grapes form a range of unique molecules that act as insect feeding-deterrents, and these circulate throughout the plant body. This funded research proposal aims to chemically identify these molecules, establish how and where they are produced and how much is needed in the plant to fully deter sap-sucking insects. The long-term aim is to develop new rootstocks for use in New Zealand that control not only phylloxera infestation, but many other insects and diseases as well. Using rootstocks for this purpose will reduce agricultural spray applications, reduce production costs, and extend the productive life of our commercial vineyards well into the future.

Our proof-of-concept Smart Idea will provide a novel, species-specific solution to the redback spider problem. Invasive Australian redback spiders pose a serious health risk to humans and an extinction threat to native fauna in Aotearoa-NZ. Current manual-based control tools are not working and precious taonga, such as the critically endangered Cromwell chafer beetle, will soon be lost to redback spiders unless something is done.

We will identify the long-range sex pheromone of the redback spiders, then develop a dispenser and trapping system to ‘lure and kill’ them. Very few spider pheromones have been identified worldwide and their use as pest management tools has not been reported, so this ambitious project will be a world first. The ‘lure and kill’ technique will be particularly effective since redback males can only mate once because of their ritualised suicide during copulation (the female eats them), hence every male attracted to the trap represents a potential batch of spiderlings prevented. Preliminary work by our team and others has shown that the pheromone compounds are likely a mixture of volatile degradation products from compounds on the virgin female silk.

To achieve these results will require the combined skills of Aotearoa-NZ’s leading invertebrate pheromone laboratory working in conjunction with Aotearoa-NZ’s eminent spider authority, in collaboration with Ngāi Tahu and DOC. Using a multidisciplinary approach comprising microchemical analysis, chemical synthesis, behavioural bioassays, dispenser/trap design and field trapping trials, our team will develop a tool that will selectively remove redback spiders from a complex, fragile environment containing critically endangered taonga. This research will save precious taonga from extinction, increase science capability in Aotearoa-NZ and provide a new control technology to support future invasive spider eradications here and overseas.

In 2019, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission estimated that improving the average ambulance response time by sixty seconds would save 10,120 lives per year, each valued at US$9.1 million. We infer that such an improvement projected to New Zealand could save up to 150 lives per year, each valued at $4.46 million by the Ministry of Transport.

The problem faced by ambulance services changes daily: they do not know how many emergencies of which urgency will occur when or where. New Zealand services act with a limited set of resources and struggle to meet the response time targets set by Government. While an increase in infrastructure funding would improve the total volume of available resources (staff and vehicles), efficient resource utilisation is critical to emergency service performance.

Using novel machine learning techniques, this project aims to develop methods that can more efficiently manage ambulance resources than human dispatchers. In collaboration with Wellington Free Ambulance, we learn from existing dispatcher expertise and years of historical dispatch data to improve response times to patients. In addition to response time, we learn dispatch policies which maximise paramedic break length, provide equitable service across the Wellington region, and are understandable to audit staff at Wellington Free Ambulance

This programme aims to treat Krabbe disease, an inherited disorder that results from the build-up of a toxic metabolite in the brain. This fatal neurodegenerative disorder, for which there is no treatment, is caused by a defective enzyme. We will use a unique technology known to deliver drugs that are highly efficacious and avoid side effects associated with off-target toxicity. As a result, we aim to deliver a life-saving drug candidate that will prevent irreversible brain and motor damage for children affected by Krabbe disease.

Plants and microbes produce natural products to protect themselves against other organisms. These natural products have found many uses in modern society, notably as antibiotics for treatment of infectious diseases. New technologies are required to accelerate natural product discovery and development of natural products to provide solutions for modern problems. For example, many diseases are becoming resistant to existing antibiotics, limiting our ability to treat them.

Fungi have provided many of the natural products that are used as antibiotics or other medicines today. Studies have shown that fungi contain enormous untapped reserves of undiscovered natural products. However, most of these products are not produced under laboratory conditions, making them difficult to obtain. This program will develop technologies that allow us to produce any fungal natural product within the laboratory, accelerating the rate at which these molecules can be discovered and bought to market.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the personal and professional lives of everyone in NZ.

Most of the important advances in AI use a technique called deep learning (DL). DL systems improve productivity and safety in manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, finance, government, and research.

The main impediment to the uptake of AI is lack of transparency. DL systems are notorious for being 'black boxes', i.e., the way that a decision is made is not transparent to the user. Users are right to be wary of decisions that are not explained. Governments have legislated the right to “meaningful information about the logic involved” for people affected by an AI decision but cannot provide it.

The active research area of explainable AI (XAI) attempts to provide this transparency. Many XAI approaches attempt to “look inside” the black box. These approaches cannot leverage the power of DL.

We have prototyped a different concept which uses repeated querying of generative models to reveal and measure the information that most impacts the decisions. This project aims to develop the concept into practical applications. The research will:

1. improve its speed
2. adapt it to the generative models applicable in particular use-cases
3. prove its competitiveness and effectiveness in terms of the reliability of the outputs, and the quality of the explanations provided.

The research will focus on a concrete use-case, namely disinformation in social media, in partnership with the New Zealand Social Media Study (NZSMS). The NZSMS promotes an informed public by publishing findings of disinformation in political party social media. NZSMS currently uses manual text analysis and use of this technique will ensure more efficient, rapid, and explainable analysis.

This project brings together artificial intelligence and drug discovery to develop novel and selective kinase inhibitors. Kinases are enzymes that play a crucial role in signalling pathways within cells, and kinase inhibitors have shown potential for treating diseases such as cancer and metabolic disorders. However, the issue of target selectivity has been a significant challenge in the development of novel therapeutic agents.

This project aims to develop an artificial intelligence framework that will design kinase inhibitors with high target selectivity and prioritise those with the potential to be effective. By exploring molecular features that engender selectivity in kinase inhibition, the framework will be able to produce compounds that have the inherent characteristics of target-selective inhibitors.

This transformative research has the potential to revolutionise pharmaceutical discovery, opening up new possibilities for drug development. Additionally, the project will contribute to the development of high-value industries in New Zealand, such as the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, thereby diversifying the economy and linking it to international expertise and markets.

The proposed approach to drug discovery is also environmentally friendly, contributing to the transition to a low-emission economy. By reducing the use of energy-intensive experiments and environmentally harmful chemicals, the method enhances the efficiency of drug discovery while contributing to environmental sustainability.

Our research programme addresses the need for better sports analytics as used by broadcasters to improve their customer’s viewing experience, increasing their viewership and revenue, and by sports clubs to improve their coaching and training strategies, improving competitiveness.

Currently, the application of computer vision techniques and automatic intelligent analysis — discovering the causal reasons for why actions are made — is lacking. Even wealthy sports teams and leagues are not able to leverage the latest advances in Artificial intelligence and behaviour modelling despite the extensive availability of team visual data recorded during training and live broadcasting.

Providing intelligent analysis through computer vision and causal models will improve access to affordable explanatory and predictive analytics for: sports clubs; small broadcasters and content creators, providing an affordable means to deliver accurate analysis of players; and team behaviours with the potential to increase their revenue, viewership, and competitiveness across a variety of sports (individual, team, and e-sports). It will also provide fans with a more immersive sporting experience, further increasing viewership and revenue.

Our broadcasting (Sky TV), Sports (The warriors) team and software development (Arcanum and 9spokes) partners will support our research and ensure a successful outcome by the end of this project. We expect potential benefits to the New Zealand economy of between NZ$10M and $NZ100M by 2030, while significantly reducing the incidence of sport injuries in New Zealand which cost our country up to NZ$700M each year.

We expect spill-over benefits to the public and the economy such as i) reduced mental and physical health effects of sport injuries; ii) support to small-scale local broadcasters and content creators; iii) new high-value manufacturing products and jobs in media and AI software applications.

Wound healing is a complex and coordinated set of events that usually proceeds without major issue. However factors such as the environment or human variables such as age, underlying diseases and medications can delay or derail this healing process. Here we propose for eventual commercialization, the development of a new type of wound healing intervention that is designed to augment healing processes in many settings. The proposed smart idea is particularly relevant to deployment in unusual and remote environments such as low gravity (for example, space station or future moon and Mars colony locations) or oxygen deprived situations (for example, high altitude), where injury healing may be impaired and complicated.  

New Zealand's Essential Freshwater package aims to protect and improve the country's freshwater quality within five years. However, a significant number of wastewater treatment systems (145 out of 321) currently discharge excessive nitrogen, surpassing the limits set by the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. To meet these standards, extensive upgrades to all wastewater treatment systems in the country would be required, involving significant investments and operational costs. However, improving nitrogen removal in these systems can lead to increased emissions of N2O, a potent greenhouse gas.

Under the Net Zero Carbon Act, New Zealand seeks to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions. As there are no domestic measurements for N2O emissions from wastewater treatment systems, utilities estimate their emissions using guidelines provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The revised 2019 IPCC emission factor for N2O in wastewater treatment was substantially increased, making the wastewater treatment contribution 37%-50% of a council's total emissions.

Currently, no solutions are available to simultaneously reduce N2O emissions and improve nitrogen removal in wastewater treatment systems. In this project, we will create a new technology that offers a unique capability to activate enzymes in the microbial nitrogen cycle, effectively reducing N2O emissions while enhancing nitrogen removal. Additionally, we will create an easy approach to accurately estimating N2O emissions during wastewater treatment to identify the major emission sources and implement targeted reduction measures.

The early stages of Greenshell mussel farming in New Zealand are often extremely inefficient, with the majority of seed mussels, or "spat" often lost from production after only a few months of being seeded onto farms. Each year, we harvest more than 300 billion mussel spat from the wild, but we only produce approximately 1.7 billion adult mussels, meaning more than 99% of the spat we harvest are lost from farms. Research has demonstrated that we can reduce these losses by seeding out with larger spat. However, current approaches to nursery culture (i.e the stage of production involving growing tiny mussel spat to larger sizes) of mussel spat require enormous quantities of live microalgae to be grown for feeding to the growing mussels. The process of growing these microalgae is extremely expensive, and as a result, current approaches to nursery culture are cost-prohibitive. Our research aims to solve this problem by developing tidally driven nursery systems that can be used to grow spat to larger sizes in situ, where they use naturally occurring microalgae found in seawater to help grow the spat. By developing tidally driven nursery systems, we hope to produce a technology capable of greatly reducing spat losses on New Zealand's mussel farms.

For enquiries, contact Dr Brad Skelton at:

Brad.Skelton@auckland.ac.nz

The parasitic mite Varroa destructor is the most significant cause of honeybee health decline in New Zealand and around the world. Through pollination, honeybees make the most valuable contribution to global food production ($US 235-577B annually) and to New Zealand’s $NZ 6.7B horticulture exports. Aotearoa also produces 15-22,000 tonnes of honey per year, worth $NZ 455M (2022). Varroa presents a considerable and growing threat to these industries. Despite >98% of New Zealand colonies being treated for Varroa, the loss of honeybee colonies continues to rise (6.4% in 2022).

This focused, ambitious R&D project will deliver a compact photonic prototype for integration into a beehive that identifies and targets Varroa mites carried by honeybees and laser-eliminates them before they can infest the colony, without chemical pesticides. This is a high-tech, science-stretch solution to a difficult challenge in the primary industries. Success will see better resiliency, food security and sustainability in the primary sector.

The project aims to develop technology that can be manufactured here in New Zealand and exported overseas, mostly to Europe and the Americas. The benefits here in Aotearoa will come through strengthening the honey, horticulture, pastoral and other industries that rely upon vibrant, robust apiculture. Though it is difficult to predict at this early stage, we estimate revenues in the $10’s to $100M’s per annum.

The R&D will be performed by a collaborative team from the University of Auckland’s Photon Factory and Plant & Food Research’s Bee Biology and Productivity Team. Together, we bring extensive laser research experience, commercialisation success and broad and deep connections with New Zealand’s beekeeping industry. Māori are key players in Aotearoa apiculture, and important stakeholders and participants in this project.

This project allows us to explore new opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint, with substantial co-benefits to marine conservation and biodiversity restoration.

New Zealand’s Zero Carbon Act seeks to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. If we are to meet this obligation, we need to implement as many options as possible and recognise there is no one solution to the climate crisis. Advice from the New Zealand Climate Commission (April 2023) shows that are current practices are not sufficient. The seafloor is the largest sore of carbon in the world and New Zealand have an extensive marine estate. Recent research has indicated at the balance of processes that support carbon storage on the seafloor is broken by trawl and dredge fisheries – potentially equating to same carbon footprint as the worlds aviation industry.

This project will work with our largest Māori fishing company who have a strong interest in defining their carbon footprint and identifying ways to lighten their impact. It will also work with kaitiaki Māori to explore the potential of protecting seafloor from disturbance to enhance carbon storage. This collaborative and interdisciplinary project will be integrated with inputs from international researchers from Europe and the USA. The project will empower the development of new solutions to the climate crisis and highlight how marine science and mātauranga can work together. A series of engagements with Government agencies and the New Zealand Climate Commission will draw attention to the opportunities provided by marine ecosystems in climate change and to foster policy and management actions that support our climate and biodiversity responsibilities.

We are at the big-bang moment of ‘AI in neuro-navigation’ and our team is dedicated to stay at the forefront of this rapidly-evolving field by delivering the next generation of surgical navigation technology.

Brain tumour resection is a complex, crucial, and significantly high-risk task. Our New Zealand team of biomedical engineers, neurosurgeons, researchers, and academics is committed to developing and delivering a ground-breaking neuronavigation technology that integrates cutting-edge artificial intelligence to assist surgeons in making the most precise decisions possible during surgery. Our technology represents a major step forward in the field of neurosurgery and has the potential to revolutionize the way surgeons approach complex brain procedures.

Our offering product harnesses the power of advanced algorithms to provide real-time, high-resolution images that enable surgeons to precisely navigate through the brain, allowing them to make confident decisions when removing tumours to minimize damage to healthy tissues. One of the key advantages of our platform is its ability to adapt to the unique needs of each patient. By combining cutting-edge machine learning techniques with sophisticated MRI imaging technologies, we plan to create a platform that can analyse vast amounts of data in seconds, allowing surgeons to make critical decisions in real-time.

We are confident that our technology has the capacity to revolutionize the field of neurosurgery by enhancing the safety and efficacy of complex procedures, ultimately reducing the risk of complications and improving patient outcomes. We are committed to working closely with neurosurgeons, imaging experts, and other medical professionals to refine our technology and create a tool that is accessible to all.

The technology developed thanks to this Smart Idea funding will allow identification of the locality and severity of prostate cancer with unprecedented accuracy and give clinicians and surgeons real-time information to diagnose prostate cancer or remove it in surgery – an international first. Our technology uses artificial intelligence to interpret MRI images (this is used to accurately localise the cancer), and photonic probes (sensors that use light) to identify healthy and cancerous tissue.

Prostate cancer is the second most common male cancer worldwide, with growing incidence. It is the most diagnosed cancer, and among the top 4 causes of death (600 deaths/year), for men in New Zealand. Māori men have significantly worse prostate cancer outcomes, being less likely to be screened and diagnosed. There is currently no method to diagnose prostate cancer rapidly and accurately. Current methods have an accuracy of 20-80% and rely on invasive biopsies with well-known side effects. ~50% of prostate biopsies are unnecessary, being of benign tissue, while 38% of cancer surgeries leave positive (cancerous) margins. Loss of life and economic impact on New Zealand exceeds $100m p.a.

Our device will revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer, building on our team’s skills in photonics, AI, medical device development, prostate cancer diagnosis and surgery, and MedTech device commercialisation. A new company will seek investment in the technology to drive manufacturing in and export from New Zealand.

The global prostate cancer diagnostics market was worth USD$3.2billion in 2020 and is projected to reach USD$8,2billion by 2028. The high-tech New Zealand company established to commercialise our next-generation diagnostic devices will provide new job opportunities in the fast-growing New Zealand’s Healthtech sector.

Many types of microparticle are soft: they can deform and even flow when they are squashed and squeezed. The mechanical (or more fully, rheological) behaviour of these particles turns out to be very important for very many research fields. To name just a few, there are open research questions about the mechanics of the cells that make up our bodies, eggs used for in vitro fertilization, colloids that make up food and beverages, the zoospores of Kauri Dieback, and the liposomes that carry medical payloads such as the new RNA vaccines.

The problem is that the researchers, clinicians and technicians working with these soft particles do not have the equipment to easily measure their mechanical properties. Particles can be counted by flow cytometers, and their chemistry can be determined by spectroscopy, but applying a force to them and properly analysing the result is actually trickier.

This project will solve that problem by developing a new technology that can carry out mechanical measurements quickly, accurately and effectively. This new technology will also be portable, adaptable, and able to be deployed in many types of laboratories, so that it will be useful for most projects and problems. It will be developed in collaboration with a network of experts across many research disciplines, who have many global connections.

Our goal is to create a product that can be assembled and exported, meeting the fast-growing global demand for such research instruments. This development will bring economic benefits and enhance the scientific and technical capability of New Zealanders. The collaborative studies in this project could also generate benefits in areas such as healthcare, environmental management, and for companies who work with soft microparticles.

Illicit substances cause approximately $2B worth of harm in New Zealand. Harm is driven by the consumption of unexpected illicit substances, large dose (concentration) variations, and the presence of harmful impurities or additives. Existing technology cannot provide information on these factors. Therefore enforcement and health agencies are requesting new tools to enable a transition to harm reduction practices (SEO200413).

Approximately 50 new illicit or potentially psychoactive chemical species are identified every year. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is one of the few techniques that is sensitive to the subtle structural differences between these samples. Benchtop NMR instruments have become available that make NMR accessible to standard analytical laboratories. However, the analysis of benchtop NMR data is challenging. This project will develop a world-first approach for automatic identification and quantification of illicit substances by frontline agencies, directly on-site at the point-of-use.

Our new approach will exploit a recently developed quantitative model of NMR spectroscopy. We will develop a novel Bayesian framework for this model and integrate that with machine-learning enhanced quantum mechanical simulation tools (SEO220402). This approach will enable automated quantification and structural identification of novel psychoactive substances.

There is a large market for this technology in forensic analysis, with drug checking services providing additional growth opportunities (SEO150499). Furthermore, the methodology developed could be adapted to, for example, the analysis of food and drink, or chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing, indicating substantial future opportunities.

We will also explore the socio-economic impact of our technology by engaging with various end-users including the Ministry of Health, Māori health providers, police, drug checking services, and drug takers.

Advancements in the digital realm have revolutionised nearly every aspect of human life. One such life-changing invention, the computer, granted us access to unprecedented data creation/processing capabilities. The profound implications of this innovation can be experienced across multiple levels, from instant photo processing for maximum impact to global video connectivity. The remarkable computing power enabled by digital machines has also significantly enhanced scientific endeavours, yielding truly spectacular results. While magnified images can be obtained using a light source and a lens, one can only explore the boundaries of light-based imaging—and push them further—through specialised detail-revealing processing. Similarly, chemical detection is done by measuring light reflected from a substance, but only advanced processing of output signals can improve the precision of that detection.

Now, a new digital "invention" has emerged, heading towards the most significant impact yet: artificial intelligence (AI). Representing an evolutionary leap for computers, neural networks operate on abstract levels that were previously unattainable using traditional algorithms. This exceptional characteristic forms the basis for novel research aimed at developing a neural network performing Fourier transformation—an algorithm dominating the digital landscape—without its inherent limitations. As this algorithm plays a crucial role in device accuracy, its advanced and high-performing version will unlock technological advancements across numerous fields. The methods using Fourier transformation to generate images (Optical Coherence Tomography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging) will output dramatically improved detail, with visualisation capabilities pushed to the virtual limits. The chemical detection based on Fourier-transform spectrometry will be ultra-precise, impacting drug discovery. This AI-powered Fourier transformation will potentially pave the way for research into upgrading/perfecting other fundamental blocks of modern techniques. 

Imagine having a battery that lasted just as long after 5, 10 or even 20 years of use as the day it was new. This is the promise of redox-flow batteries, which store energy using liquid electrolytes rather than solid electrodes that degrade over time. Unfortunately, they won't be coming to a mobile phone or computer near you any time soon, partly because consumer electronics and liquids don't mix but - more seriously - because they can't store nearly enough energy in a small enough volume for many practical applications. Our research aims to solve this problem by inventing new materials known as ionic liquids that are a lot more energy dense than the materials currently used in redox-flow batteries.

If we're successful, they still won't replace your phone or computer battery but they may replace lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles (imagine being able to refill your tank with charged battery fluid rather than having to wait at a charging station!), will be a really good, cost-effective and environmentally-conscious replacement for the lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries commonly used for storing electricity generated by rooftop solar panels, and will also be able to play this role on a much grander scale; storing all energy generated from the variable and intermittent renewable supply (for example, wind, solar, tidal) across the grid network. These batteries will play a critical role in helping New Zealand reach its climate change goals of 100% renewable electricity generation by 2035 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

Methane’s global warming potential is much more powerful than CO2 and represents 40% of NZ’s carbon footprint (primarily from dairy). NZ’s Paris Accord commitments and the Zero Carbon Act require a 10% reduction in methane emissions by 2030. Currently, there is no solution to address methane beyond herd reduction. This project will develop enhanced biofiltration technology to convert a significant fraction of the methane exhaled by cows to CO2.

Converting methane to CO2 eliminates the problem, as atmospheric CO2 is extracted by the grass fed to the cows (photosynthesis). Therefore, this CO2 release is carbon-neutral, with zero net-impact on global warming, as compared to fossil fuel CO2 releases.

To treat the methane, it must be captured and treated. Traditional dairy barns are not widely used in NZ; however, regulatory changes for nitrate will shift cows off the paddock (especially in winter) into shelters, with the additional benefit of improving animal welfare. This transformational shift to shelters offers an opportunity for biofilters to solve the dairy CH4 problem. Methane-contaminated air flows through the biofilter and natural microorganisms convert it to CO2. Biofiltration is common in NZ but not for methane removal, because the removal rates are too slow. This project will implement several key science developments to significantly improve the removal rates of methane.

Beyond contributing to the required 10% reduction in methane emissions, success will offset the industry’s commitments to the emission trading scheme, which agriculture must join by 2025. Biofiltration could provide ~30-50% of NZ’s required methane reduction. Success would also have international impact because methane emissions are a world-wide problem from many sources (landfills, coalmines, wastewater).

This project will develop an innovative technology for absorbing excess ammonia using sheep’s wool to mitigate the adverse effects of ammonia pollution from indoor agricultural operations.
 
Excess ammonia in the environment is a public concern as it is toxic to both humans and animals, promotes unwanted algal growth in waterways, and causes air pollution through the formation of small airborne particles. Current ammonia scrubbing systems involve the use of harsh toxic chemicals that require complex storage, handling, and disposal protocols, and the associated health-and-safety and compliance considerations. We envisage that the use of a natural under-valued material that is relatively abundant in NZ (course sheep's wool) that does not require specialised handling, will have environmental and economic benefits as well as ease-of-uptake and use.
 
We have recently discovered that appropriately treated sheep’s wool can reduce ammonia concentration in an air-flow. We will study this unique phenomenon through surface studies of the treated wool fibre to create a product that can be used to sequester ammonia in the air. We plan to investigate the regeneration of the treated wool product for repeated use, and harvesting of the captured ammonia for productive applications.

Our team consists of academic and industrial scientists, and industry partners, who can make use of the deep wool expertise in NZ. Although agricultural applications will serve as a demonstration, we can see the use of this technology in other applications to create other products, from personal protection equipment (PPE) to alternative-fuel production.

Heating, Ventilating, Air-conditioning, and Refrigeration equipment is estimated to account for around 20% of global electricity use and around 8% of global emissions.
 
Unfortunately, this equipment suffers from a build-up of water films that reduces their efficiency.
 
If a means could be found to manage this water and stop the films forming, it is estimated that the equipment’s efficiency could be lifted by 30% to 40%. This would have a major positive impact on the demand for electricity and GHG emissions.

Our Smart Idea addresses this problem by using micro patterned surfaces in the heat exchangers (HX) to remove droplets of water before they collapse into films.

There are 2 major problems standing in the way of this solution. Developing and reproducing the necessary patterns at a mm2 scale and being able to design heat exchanger surfaces to give this desired overall performance.

We will use our team’s skills in:

• Microfabrication, microfluids, computational fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and high-speed motion capture to design the necessary patterns and reproduce them using 3D printing
• Machine learning and generative AI to develop tools to design the micro patterns based on the performance required of the exchanger surface. The latter is not possible using traditional software because there are simply too many options to allow more traditional approaches to optimisation.

The team will be advised by a range of companies in the HX manufacturing and AI software areas; organisations involved with appliance efficiency and its impact on emissions; and those involved in the development of Manufacturing 4.0 in NZ that this project will contribute to.

This project will create a minimally invasive and inexpensive sampling technique to identify the animals used in manufacturing taonga tūturu, precious objects created by Māori artisans. This will substantially enhance the capabilities of the museum and heritage sector to find and engage meaningfully with the custodians of these taonga.

Taonga tūturu have whakapapa (genealogies) that connect them to Te Ao Māori (the Māori world), but through the process of colonisation, the provenance of many of these objects in museums is unknown. Species identification of many taonga tūturu materials is impossible visually, and currently available destructive sampling impacts the mauri (life force) of taonga tūturu.

Collagen peptide mass fingerprinting (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry or ZooMS) allows for inexpensive and rapid taxonomic identification of collagenous materials such as bone, skin, and hair, but traditionally requires a piece of an object to be cut off and destroyed.

We aim to develop MIMS (Minimally Invasive Molecular Story) – using a small piece of fine grit polishing film - to collect a small sample for analysis, allowing the mauri (life force) and visible appearance of an object to remain intact while enabling identification of the material. This means taonga tūturu can be cared for in accordance with tikanga and, where appropriate, repatriated.

Beyond taonga tūturu, the optimisation of this technique has exciting applications for contemporary biodiversity and conservation science. It would enable taonga and other species to be readily and inexpensively identified, especially where decomposition or utilisation of the species has made morphological or DNA identification unlikely. Contexts for its use include cetacean and other marine mammal strandings, and applications at the border to identify incoming animal materials and enable compliance with CITES.

Our goal is to create a new, high-value line of products from New Zealand seaweed (rimurimu) through use of an environmentally-friendly technology (pulsed electric field or ‘PEF’) to generate supporting material for tissue engineering.

Tissue engineering enables creation of functional tissues outside or within their animal host and is used for repair of human organs (regenerative medicine) and ethical production of cell-based meat and seafood (cellular agriculture). The supporting materials used must be safe for cells to grow on and provide physical and biological cues that encourage tissue formation. There is an unmet demand for natural materials produced in a sustainable and ethical manner that does not harm the environment.

We propose processing of seaweed can deliver all the requirements for supporting materials and that sustainable production is possible without harsh chemicals or wastage. Our Smart Idea will pioneer the application of PEF to intact seaweed to isolate its cellulose and other active constituents, then establishing their utility for engineering of skin and muscle.

Our internationally recognised team of scientists from University of Otago, Plant and Food Research and Victoria University of Wellington, in partnership with Māori whānau-owned business AgriSea NZ Seaweed, are poised to develop the knowledge, tools and pathways needed to integrate manufacturing of tissue engineering products into a sustainable seaweed sector.

In our Māori-centric approach, we will explore rimurimu whakapapa and seek kawa and tikanga relating to the gathering, storage, traditional use, and protection of rimurimu. This will enable us to seamlessly merge Māori knowledge and perspectives with high-end technology to underpin development of an industry where remote coastal communities will supply seaweed for manufacturing of high-value products for export to tissue engineering industries.

Recent viral outbreaks have highlighted the need for products that can provide immediate, short-term protection against infection as a complement to vaccination or when vaccines are not yet available. One potential solution is to use antibodies, immune molecules that bind to and block the function of viruses. Producing sufficient antibodies for population-scale deployment can be difficult but significant quantities are naturally produced in the milk of ruminant species like sheep and cows. The challenge is to efficiently direct these antibody responses against viruses of concern.

Our Smart Idea is to improve antiviral antibody induction in ruminants using a new class of molecular Smart-Antigens. These designer protein molecules fuse elements of the sheep’s own immune system with viral components to massively increase the production of antibodies after immunisation. We will target the viral pathogen norovirus for which no vaccine currently exists, and treatment options are few. This pathogen disproportionately affects both the very young and the elderly in Aotearoa/New Zealand and around the world.

Our final product will be hyperimmune milk powder sachets suitable for reconstitution and personal use. By developing these products, we will create a new biotechnology-focused dairy sector with a focus on high-value and low-volume products rather than commodity supply. We will tap into the substantial market for milk-based supplements which is expected to rapidly grow at over 8.8% each year to over NZD$350 million by 2026. Developing our products will bring value across the dairy chain with benefits for individual producer farms, dairy processors, and exporters alike.

Dementia is currently the seventh leading cause of death among all diseases and a major cause of disability and dependency worldwide. Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is its most common form and may contribute to 60-70% of cases. The current gold standard of diagnosing and monitoring AD heavily relies on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) β-Amyloid (Aβ) protein detection and CT/MRI/PET scans. However, the use of these methods presents several challenges: CSF analysis is invasive, CT and PET scans involve ionizing radiation, CT and MRI scans do not detect AD-related pathology, and PET scans are expensive and have limited availability.

This project will develop a new microwave AD scanner (MAS) that is safe, cost-effective, non-invasive, pathologically specific, and portable, differentiating it from currently available imaging equipment and driving uptake in point-of-care applications, where patients can be tested outside an imaging suite or even in the individual’s home. Currently, ultrasound is the only truly portable imaging modality as required for point-of-care testing; however, ultrasound has difficulty in penetrating the human skull and therefore is not suitable for brain imaging. Our new approach will provide improved capability for rapidly diagnosing and monitoring AD, while providing direct measurement of AD-related pathology.

Our scanner will be made possible through our understanding of the imaging potential of chirality (handedness) of Aβ protein. This project will generate new knowledge about how we can make use of signal polarization deflection properties correlated with Aβ chirality to detect and locate Aβ in the human brain. Our research will drive new manufacturing capability in New Zealand for the MAS and its IP-rich hardware system.

Contact:

yifan.chen@waikato.ac.nz

Background

This project supports the emerging seaweed aquaculture industry in Aotearoa NZ by providing a proof-of-concept for the development of seaweed probiotics. The probiotics are based on microbial communities naturally associated with seaweed and aim to improve seaweed productivity and quality. To do this we will develop probiotic inoculants for application during the sensitive hatchery stage using a bottom-up approach (i.e constructing probiotic mixtures from single isolated bacteria) guided by bioinformatics and advanced statistical methods, and a novel top-down approach (i.e artificial selection of whole microbiomes) that selects seaweed microbiomes based on seaweed performance indicators. This approach leverages the high evolutionary potential of microbiomes and targets communities of microorganisms, which tend to be more stable to environmental changes due to functional redundancy built into their community structure.

Benefits to NZ

Seaweed probiotics improve growth and product quality, widening business profit margins. Seaweed seedlings are out-planted for grow-out based on size, so any reduction in time required in the hatchery results in significant cost reductions for hatchery management per seeding-event. Integration of other land-based aquaculture or waste-streams with improved seaweed production systems that better remove nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous) will reduce nutrient pollution and protect Aotearoa’s natural capital. New aquaculture technologies will support businesses and job-creation, and thereby growth in financial and physical capital.

Key beneficiaries

Laboratory studies have demonstrated that improvements in host microbiota increase seaweed productivity and quality, providing scope for new business opportunities and intellectual property development. Opportunity therefore exists for significant value-creation from Iwi-held and Pākehā businesses. Te Whānau-ā-Apanui have long-term aspirations to enhance mana through restoration of kaimoana and will benefit first from this project by co-developing and implementing land-based seaweed aquaculture and hatchery operations at Raukokore.

This research aims to develop a new thermal energy storage technology to couple renewable heat sources, such as geothermal, biomass and solar, to heat demand in process heat and electricity generation.

This will reduce the need for fossil fuels in our primary processing sectors and electricity supply, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid carbon charges that would otherwise increase the cost of electricity and food products. The technology will also reduce the size of heat plants, save on the capital cost of new zero-emissions heat plants and hasten the decarbonisation of process heat. The global market for this technology is substantial and could lead to development of a large advanced manufacturing sector.

This project will radically advance understanding of solid-state hydrogen storage, using high-entropy alloys, and produce novel, safe, and efficient hydrogen storage materials compatible with fuel-cell technology for widescale green hydrogen applications.

Our ability to design high-entropy alloys with very high hydrogen storage capacities and modest absorption/desorption conditions that match existing fuel-cell technologies for practical applications is constrained by our limited understanding of how the characteristics of high-entropy alloys influence their reversible hydrogen storage capacity, thermodynamics, kinetics, and cycling stability.

This project will deliver optimised high-entropy alloy hydrogen storage materials and technologies that meet weight, volume, thermodynamic, kinetic, and safety requirements. This research will enable the use of hydrogen for transportation and stationary energy storage applications, such as medium-/heavy-duty transportation vehicles, future home appliances, e-bikes, back-up power for data centres, and off-shore intermittent energy storage, helping establish a working low-carbon economy.

Our New Zealand-led multidisciplinary international team has strong track records in materials processing, crystal structure science and compositional analysis, hydrogen storage technology development, and computational simulation. Our team from the Universities of Waikato, Sydney, and Penn State, GNS Science, and Hiringa Energy brings both scientific expertise and strong hydrogen industry relationships.

Contact Fei Yang:

fei.yang@waikato.ac.nz
 

Recent overseas research has highlighted the potential for record-shattering weather events to occur in the presence of high rates of global warming, rates which are expected to persist over the next several decades irrespective of emission reduction policies. Record-shattering events are those which exceed previous long-standing records by significant margins - they often have substantial social and economic impacts, due to a tendency for systems to adapt to the highest-intensity events experienced during a lifetime but rarely higher.

Building on successful research looking into the already-elevated risks of witnessing extreme meteorological drought events in Aotearoa, this project will combine data from very large regional climate model ensembles with guidance from historical observations and mātauranga Māori to identify physically plausible, record-shattering drought events capable of occurring across the motu within the next three decades. By quantifying locally specific estimates of the upper bound of future drought-related hazards, as well as contextualising how these plausible events relate to past experiences, this project will resolve the adaptation requirements needed for drought-exposed communities to thrive in a warming Aotearoa.