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Profiling Excellence Highlights of 2012 4 Lifting our horizon 6 In the spotlight 9 Top research Welcome to Profiling Excellence, fellows which highlights some of the Royal Society of New Zealand’s 1 0 Leading-edge key activities during 2012. We research hope you enjoy reading the stories we have chosen to showcase here. 12 Supporting 2012 was a year of many achievements and much change. One particular milestone was the completion early-career in August of Te Whare Apa-rangi – the five-year researchers redevelopment project designed to create a modern office environment for staff and versatile public meeting facilities on our site in Thorndon, Wellington. 14 Connected During the year we enjoyed strong engagement worldwide from our Fellows and wider membership and pursued many initiatives. This publication highlights our involvement in the Transit of Venus Forum, some of our international activities and publication 16 Outstanding of evidence-based papers aimed at generating secondary informed debate. It also features celebrated researchers, from secondary school students school science to winners of our prestigious medals. It has been a privilege to recognise and support emerging and established researchers through 18 Evidence- contracts including the Marsden Fund, James Cook based advice Research Fellowships and Rutherford Discovery Fellowships. Thank you to our many supporters and sponsors who continue to make our work possible – Fellows, Companions, Constituent Organisations, Members, sponsors, government and especially our dedicated staff. Professor Sir David Skegg Dr Di McCarthy KNZM OBE FRSNZ ONZM President Chief Executive 4 ROYAL SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND | HIGHLIGHTS OF 2012 Lifting our horizon The Royal Society of New Zealand was one of the partners in the 2012 Transit of Venus Forum, which took place from 5 to 8 June 2012 in Gisborne and Tolaga Bay. Hundreds of scientists, iwi representatives, Viewing the transit dignitaries and delegates gathered to further the vision of the late Sir Paul Callaghan FRS FRSNZ In one of the few sunny areas of New Zealand of making New Zealand “a place where talent on 5 June, the Transit of Venus Forum participants wants to live”. viewed the transit in Tolaga Bay with the support and engagement of the local community. Visitors Topics discussed included science and prosperity, were able to walk along the restored Tolaga Bay - the emerging Maori economy, using and managing Wharf, watched over by HMNZS Rotoiti of the our resources, restoring and enhancing the Royal New Zealand Navy. environment and New Zealand’s connection with the rest of the world. Where to from here The goals for the forum were to inspire young Following on from the event, the Prime Minister’s people to play a role in our future; to provide an Chief Science Advisor Sir Peter Gluckman FRS opportunity for an evidence-based discussion of FRSNZ prepared a report, Science and New New Zealand’s current realities; to further links Zealand’s Future: Reflections from the Transit of between iwi investors and leaders and the research Venus Forum, which highlighted the connectedness, community; and to consider how our nation, commitment and conversation that the forum had particularly small communities and provincial encouraged. The discussions at the forum concluded centres, can develop sustainably. that New Zealand, like other small countries, will have to strive hard to find its place in the world, and acknowledged the critical role being played by research and innovation. As Sir Peter Gluckman said at the forum: “there is no challenge that we Image: Participants view the transit of Venus from will face over coming decades that does not Tolaga Bay Wharf. depend on science”. On the airwaves Arising out of the ideas generated at the forum was Paradise Regained, the 2012 Talking Heads series of lectures, produced in partnership with Radio New Zealand. Sydney Parkinson, artist aboard the Endeavour on James Cook’s first voyage to New Zealand, had described the country as “agreeable beyond description, and … might be rendered a kind of second Paradise”. Broadcaster Kim Hill CRSNZ led the series of panel discussions and lectures that discussed ways to realise Sydney Parkinson’s vision of New Zealand including conservation, sustainable economic growth and a new enlightenment. The series can be heard online at: www.royalsociety.org.nz/paradise-regained The transit as inspiration The transit of Venus was also the inspiration for the 2012 Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing, an annual competition organised in association with the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. “One day in 1769 the future of Aotearoa arrived quite unexpectedly, from the East, and in a form undreamt of.” Entrants were asked to reflect on what is on the horizon now. The winner of the non-fiction section was Dr Renee Liang from Auckland with her entry Epigenetics: Navigating our Inner Seas, a personal essay written from her perspective as a new mother. Brian Langham of Wellington won the fiction section with his story Fourteen, in which a father and son go to the Gold Coast during the transit of Venus. The winning entries and 20 shortlisted entries can be read online at: www.royalsociety.org.nz/2012manhire A special journal edition The transit of Venus offered an opportunity for the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand to compile a special issue around this theme, guest-edited by the late Sir Paul Callaghan and Dr Rebecca Priestley. The issue presented twelve invited forum articles beginning with a poem from Bill Manhire CNZM FRSNZ. This was followed by articles on a range of subjects including navigation, genealogy, astronomy, New Zealand flora and fauna, human migration and New Zealand history. 6 ROYAL SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND | HIGHLIGHTS OF 2012 In the spotlight In November the Royal Society of New Zealand presented medals and awards to some of New Zealand’s top researchers at the 2012 Research Honours Dinner. Winning at molecular chess One recent success story is modifying a naturally occurring peptide found in the brain after traumatic Distinguished Professor Margaret Brimble CNZM brain injury that helps prevent secondary cell death. FRSNZ was awarded the Rutherford Medal, New She and her team have created 120 similar versions Zealand’s top science and technology honour, and of the natural peptide. $100,000 in award money for her world-leading contributions to the synthesis of bioactive natural One of these peptides, called NNZ-2566, is more stable and better able to cross the blood-brain barrier products and novel peptides. She is only the than the natural version. The US army has invested second woman to have won the Rutherford Medal US$23 million in this potential drug, which is now in its 21-year history. undergoing advanced human clinical trials (stage 2b) Professor Brimble was also awarded the Hector internationally. Medal – for excellence in chemistry – and The molecule could be beneficial for a wide range the MacDiarmid Medal – for science of potential of patients, such as those suffering concussion or human benefit. head injury from accidents, ballistic head wounds, Professor Brimble’s work encompasses both strokes, and even those who have been exposed academic and commercial areas. She is Chair of to certain toxins. Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at The University of “When we started working on the project, people Auckland and she is also a Principal Investigator in the said there was no way we could do it with a small Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery. team in academia. My PhD supervisor, who was Head In her academic work, she and her team take of Medicinal Chemistry for Merck’s Neuroscience complex natural molecules, such as shellfish toxins, Centre in the UK, was visiting me when we started and work out how to synthesise them using a working on the project and just laughed at the idea mixture of approaches, either mimicking natural that we thought we could create a compound that synthesis pathways or using modern organic would make it into clinical trials but we have. It’s synthesis techniques. an amazing story.” “We have to combine all the approaches together to Images from left: Hon Steven Joyce presents Rutherford Medal to come up with the best way of tackling the molecule. Distinguished Professor Margaret Brimble; Distinguished Professor It’s a fast-moving and competitive research area.” Margaret Brimble and Jack Chen in the lab; Professor Russell Gray, Mason Durie Medal winner; Sir Mason Durie presents medal to She says it may take as little as a month to identify Professor Russell Gray. and characterise a new natural molecule, but it can take years to figure out how to make it. “It’s like molecular chess. Sometimes you get really close, but you can’t quite complete the synthesis, so you haven’t got checkmate. That can often mean going right back to the beginning and coming up with another approach.” Professor Brimble also does commercial work and is Director of Medicinal Chemistry for Neuren Pharmaceuticals. New medal for social science A new medal for advances in the frontiers of social science, the inaugural Mason Durie Medal, was presented to Professor Russell Gray FRSNZ of the School of Psychology at The University of Auckland. The new medal honours Professor Sir Mason Durie, who is widely recognised for his research on health outcomes, development of health policy and extensive work with Ma-ori community health providers. Professor Gray’s research interests are diverse but what underlies them is evolutionary theory. He has pioneered the application of evolutionary thinking and methods to the social sciences, applying these methods in a systematic way. His computational evolutionary methods have helped solve the 200-year-old debate about the origin of Indo-European languages.
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