The Rutherford Discovery Fellowships support New Zealand’s most talented early- to mid-career researchers by providing financial support of $800,000 over a five-year period to investigate a particular research topic, and help them further their career in New Zealand.

The three Victoria University researchers are Dr Dillon Mayhew, who will continue his mathematics research in the field of matroids and model theory, Dr Robert McKay for the Antarctic ice Sheet-Southern Ocean interactions during greenhouse worlds of the past 23 million years – and consequences for New Zealand climate, and Dr Elizabeth Stanley who will explore the changing status of human rights in New Zealand.

Victoria University Vice-Chancellor Professor Pat Walsh says the Fellowship awards are a significant achievement for the researchers involved. “These awards, set up by the Government in 2010, will allow some of our best and brightest researchers achieve their potential to make an enormous contribution to New Zealand.

“I am delighted and proud that three of the ten Fellowships have been awarded to Victoria University researchers this year. It is immensely satisfying to see those who have dedicated their career to discovery and world-leading research being supported and recognised in this way.”

The fellowships are administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

About Dr Dillon Mayhew

Dr Dillon Mayhew

Dr Dillon Mayhew is a Lecturer in Victoria University's School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research.

After completing undergraduate studies at Victoria, he received a prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship to complete a PhD in mathematics at the University of Oxford.

The Rutherford Discovery Fellowship will enable Dr Mayhew to continue his mathematics research into matroid and model theory, which he describes as 'computer-age geometry' and has applications in computer science.

He is also a talented musician and, in his spare time, plays French horn in the Wellington Orchestra. Dr Mayhew is currently visiting the United States, where he is working with colleagues in the mathematics department at Princeton University.

About Dr Robert McKay

Dr Rob McKay

Dr Rob McKay is a lecturer in Victoria University’s Antarctic Research Centre. He is regarded as one of the world’s top glacial sedimentologists, and his research into past environmental change in Antarctica won him the 2011 Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize.

He has made numerous trips to Antarctica, gathering marine sedimentary records and glacial deposits to reconstruct episodes of melting and cooling in Antarctica over millions of years.

The Rutherford Discovery Fellowship will enable Dr McKay to conduct an in-depth study into how the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Southern Ocean has interacted over the past 23 million years, with particular reference to how New Zealand’s climate is likely to be affected in the future by greenhouse gas emissions.

As he points out, the consequences of Antarctic warming are more far-reaching than sea level rise alone: changes in the Southern Ocean sea ice belt around Antarctic would affect the primary plankton productivity in the Southern Ocean.

Just as critical, is that warming of the Antarctic weakens the temperature gradient between the poles and equators, as this changes the location and strength of the westerly winds that pass over the Southern Ocean and New Zealand latitudes. These winds help drive global ocean circulation, and regulate the relative location where Antarctic and tropical-sourced water masses meet. These waters currently meet in the latitude of New Zealand, and as we have a strongly maritime-influenced climate, changes in the Southern Ocean and Antarctic will have a profound impact on our climate.

Dr McKay is currently visiting international collaborators in Granada, Spain and Birmingham, UK, with whom he will be working closely with in the future on his Rutherford Fellowship.

About Dr Elizabeth Stanley

Dr Elizabeth Stanley is a senior lecturer in the Institute of Criminology.

Her research ‘What happened to human rights? Exploring the changing status of human rights in New Zealand’ investigates the development and decline of human rights standards in New Zealand. It will examine three populations that have been linked to weakened human rights practices: children in trouble with authorities, prisoners and asylum seekers/refugees. It considers the contexts in which their rights have been both observed and curtailed from the end of World War Two to the present day.

The project will also chart the contemporary challenge to human rights erosion, and explain the ways in which New Zealanders and international actors continue to affirm human rights for the three groups in this study. The research will also explore how the culture of human rights can be reinvigorated in New Zealand, and explain why this move is important to New Zealand society, both locally and globally.