Antarctic Research Centre scientists conduct field work across Antarctica and Aotearoa to understand climate change to provide policy-relevant information and understand future impacts of melting ice and rising sea levels. Past climate records provide insight into the rates and magnitudes of climate and ice sheet changes that may be possible in the near future and allow the fingerprint of human influences to be identified in the climate system. The Centre has dedicated programmes on the local impacts of sea level change and changing snowfields around Aotearoa to help inform how we build a more resilient future for our country and Pacific Island nations.

Environmental data is available for less than 5% of New Zealand's 3,800 lakes, and these datasets typically cover only 20 to 30 years. Most previous efforts to improve water quality in these lakes have not been successful or have required expensive ongoing interventions. The Lakes380 project, the largest scientific study of New Zealand’s lakes to date, collected and analysed water samples, lake bottom sediment samples, and lake sediment cores from approximately 10% of the lakes. The programme results will assist in establishing realistic goals for lake restoration and identify lakes in need of protection.

Initiated nearly a decade ago, this research focuses on developing innovative tools for managing kauri dieback disease through educational tools, improved diagnostics and effective management options. This display features a Virtual Reality Kauri Forest Experience that immerses users in a journey from the canopy to the soil beneath. The experience aims to enhance understanding and awareness of kauri dieback while emphasising the importance of protecting these iconic trees. The display also includes a new, field-friendly diagnostic tool for kauri dieback disease. Faster and more accurate than existing techniques,  it utilizes portable equipment and requires minimal training, making it accessible to Iwi, Councils, and other community groups.

Sustainability Transition Framework (STF) is a high-level interpretation of the complex dynamics dominating the current historical moment characterised by an aspiration for accelerated climate action and challenges with implementing change. It brings together a set of theories about change, which were developed in different disciplines and not commonly discussed at the same time.

These are:

• sustainability transitions
• diffusion of innovation theory
• change curve
• style cycles.

These are visually depicted and integrated into the STF diagram. This is one of the most comprehensive integrations of currently available knowledge on how change happens, which is essential for accelerated climate action.

The research project examines how increasing use of virtual reality (VR) in the context of education for sustainability impacts on pedagogies, learning and logistical consideration from a range of perspectives.  It considers the diversity of applications including school learners, university students as well as the education of prospective tourists.

The broader project, which includes two research-informed VR sustainability learning environments, was awarded the prestigious Wharton-QS Reimagine Education Gold Award for Sustainability (2020/21).

A local sleep app that aims to support student wellbeing is under development, with the objective of developing scalable approaches to improving mental health. The research looking at user experience and design, together with modern thinking in health psychology to improve engagement in a publicly-available New Zealand mental health programme for depression. The research also explores diverse stakeholder perspectives about the value that a digital mental health clinic can offer in Aotearoa’s mental health services landscape.

Virtual reality (VR) is a powerful tool when it comes to creating new education, training and therapy solutions for healthcare providers and consumers.  A novel and transformative medium that provides environments and experiences, VR provides education and training experiences for health professionals and therapies to health consumers. Each project showcased has interactive VR displays, headsets and hand controls that allow the user to engage with and understand complex care situations. The significance of this research is the development of digital technologies to improve consumer experiences and healthcare outcomes.

Established in 2005, Te Tātai Hauora o Hine—National Centre for Women’s Health Research Aotearoa (NCWHRA) has a proud tradition of research into health issues relevant to New Zealand women, particularly Māori women. The research model puts the whānau at the centre, and staff address clinical and systemic issues that impact women and children. The Centre is committed to translating research results into better systems and processes of care, through recommendations for health practitioners, hospitals and health organisations, government, and other relevant stakeholders.

This research focuses on investigating non-medication avenues to support people with mild to moderate mental ill health and social determinant causes of mental health problems and, or loneliness. The display will focus on the evidence-based non-medication treatments that have been successful in supporting people with mild to moderate mental illness, as described above. In the United Kingdom and America, these treatment options are called ‘Social Prescribing’, as the medical or nurse practitioner can refer people to social activities, such as singing, dancing, sewing, knitting, gardening, cooking, etc., where they can meet and socialise with other people like themselves.

This means that the adverse effects of unnecessary medication are avoided, and people improve quickly. There is no evidence to suggest that this socially mediated distress is treatable by antidepressants. In fact, the evidence suggests that only severe depression responds to antidepressants.

New Zealand experiences a rapid rise in type 2 diabetes, leading to high diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) prevalence and amputations that disproportionately affect Māori and Pacific patients. A possible solution focuses on evidence-based early DFU diagnosis and prevention through customised footwear that offers patient-specific offloading and sensing. Integrating 3D scanning, electroactive polymers, and 3D printing, this fully automated process produces customised footwear in one day, aiming to improve healthcare access, patient adherence, and cost savings.

Me Tū ā-Uru research over the past four years has evaluated and explored examples of governance and policy that were supporting better environmental and social outcomes. The research group’s major findings have been that Te Tiriti o Waitangi provides a blueprint for environmental governance and policy which produces positive environmental outcomes, that we need to keep valuing the unique knowledge systems and laws of Aotearoa and that health relationships amongst tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti and the environment need to be prioritised for better environmental outcomes.

Despite enduring calls for change in the way justice is delivered in Aotearoa New Zealand, reform has often been limited and siloed. The Te Herenga Waka Centre for Justice Innovation, established in 2023, seeks to undertake and promote independent research, creating an evidence base for systemic and lasting change to justice-related law, practice and policy. This focuses on the impacts of justice processes on the people involved, including ongoing interdisciplinary projects, on rising custodial remand rates; doing justice in sexual violence cases, including the use of restorative approaches and juror use of “rape myths”; the impacts of vicarious trauma on those working in the courts; aspects of court technology and “remote justice”; and innovative judicial approaches in the courts.

This project uses a multiple case-study design to investigate how early childhood teachers’ practices and interactions can effectively support oral language acquisition and learning for children from Pacific heritages. The project is a collaboration between researchers from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, University of Waikato, Massey University and four early childhood centre teaching teams:

• A'oga Amata EFKS Newtown
• Te Punanga Reo o te Reo Kuki Airani
• Moera and Waiwhetu Kindergartens from Hutt City Kindergartens.

The focus is on quality teacher-child practices and interactions that support children’s oral language learning and development, underpinned by Pacific values and using the Pacific research methodologies of teu le va and talanoa alongside Western research methodologies to build understandings of effective practices that support Pacific children’s oral language learning.

How can we unveil the cultural mosaic and enhance Pacific professional development in schools? This area of study focuses on a transformative journey through the diverse tapestry of Pacific cultures with groundbreaking research on professional development in schools. Embracing cultural nuances enriches learning environments, fosters inclusion, and ignites a passion for lifelong learning.

Technical vocabulary is important in trades education, future work communication, and employee mobility. Knowledge and use of this vocabulary is a marker of expertise and belonging to a trade but can be a barrier to successful written and spoken communication. This group’s current research extends The Language in Trades Education (LATTE) in Aotearoa New Zealand in two ways

• a talanoa-based project on the challenges and opportunities of technical vocabulary in trades education in Samoan and English
• working with Tongan trades schools to uncover and address the technical vocabulary needs of teachers and learners.

Researchers at Victoria University of Wellington embarked on a project named Tattoo and Information to explore tattoos as an information phenomenon. Information is not just embedded in a tattoo image but supports or hinders the entire acquisition process and subsequent life-long wearing of a tattoo. In that way, tattoo acquisition and wearing are informational journeys. For this journey to be a positive experience, it needs to be supported by strong information literacy skills that will help people search for, evaluate, communicate and share information and understand the societal, cultural and legal implications of tattoos.

Forensic linguistics is the scientific investigation of any occurrence of language within language crime, legal procedure, and written documentation (including policy documents). This includes questions of profiling and/or identifying who wrote or spoke an unknown message, whether someone should be given an interpreter, how and where communication errors occurred, whether or not an utterance is malicious, and whether or not policy is ambiguous, amongst other topics. Past examples of the forensic linguistic research and analysis will be presented.

Learning a second language can be challenging. Few learners reach high levels of proficiency, and many give up during early stages. Traditionally, it has been thought that the primary tasks of a language learner are to acquire a set of grammar rules and to memorise a large number of words. This ‘words-and-rules’ view is now being challenged. Research suggests that language is highly ‘chunked’ or ‘prefabricated’ in nature, with speakers drawing on a limited repertoire of chunks rather than constructing language anew. The focus in language learning and teaching should thus be on chunks, rather than solely on single words.

Dr Hannah Waddington, Dr Jessica Tupou, and the Victoria University of Wellington Autism Clinic team have co-designed two programmes for supporting young autistic and potentially autistic children alongside key community stakeholders.

Raupī te Raupō aims to help whānau and family members to better understand and support their child. He Takiwa He Wawatā is a Māori-centred resource which aims to support early childhood educators working with autistic tamariki Māori.

Both programmes are underpinned by culturally responsive and neurodiversity-affirming approaches. Preliminary research suggests that families and professionals find both programmes to be acceptable and beneficial for themselves and the child. The team will now evaluate these programmes on a larger scale.

Kimihia te Matangaro is a project that empowers Māori communities to reconnect uri with their whenua and whakapapa through automated linking of publicly accessible data. Examples of impact include timely processing of successions, the reclamation of ancestral names for landblocks that catalyse new land use strategies, enhancing information access, and community engagement leading to more equitable decision-making. Whether end users are iwi, hapū, marae, trust, or Māori business entity, finding and reconnecting with missing uri is key to increased economic, social, cultural prosperity, and spiritual wellbeing.

Robinson’s MRI research focuses on creating novel superconducting magnet and MRI scanner technologies. These new scanner technologies are intended to improve the accessibility of this ubiquitous medical imaging modality.

Our focus is on making scanners much smaller whilst retaining clinical image quality. By so doing, we will make scanners cheaper to purchase and run, whilst being more user friendly for clinician and patient alike.

Transitioning the “Hard-to-Abate” sectors such as aviation, shipping, steel, cement, and fertilisers towards zero CO2 and greenhouse emissions has been extremely challenging. These sectors are massive carbon emitters due to their enormous use of natural gases and crude fossil fuels. Associate Professor Franck Natali will show how an opportunity suggested by blue skies research in materials science and physics and laboratory bench results opened a universal opportunity to decarbonise the industrial production of ammonia, with its major market application as a fertiliser and carbon-free fuel.

Biosensors offer potential lab-on-a-chip diagnostics for on-the-spot healthcare, or environmental monitoring in remote locations. We are studying new ways of making electronic devices out of nanomaterials, including carbon nanotubes and graphene, as electronic platforms for biosensors. To make our sensors we couple biological receptors, such as aptamers, or insect odorant receptors onto our nanomaterial, to make ultrasensitive and selective sensors.

Kiwis love their birds—we even named ourselves after one. But many of our unique taonga species are in trouble, and to work out how to help them we need to monitor them. Mostly they are hard to see, but they mostly make plenty of noise, so the AviaNZ project combines mathematics and ecology to recognise the calls of our birds and turn them into estimates of their abundance. From putting spy microphones on Kiwi to covering the country in recorders in case the South Island Kōkako still exists, we do what it takes to learn about New Zealand's soundscapes.

After the initial discovery in the early 1990s that mRNA encoding protein antigens could be used in vaccination, the medical promise of mRNA-base vaccines was realized with the rapid approval of Comirnity (BioNtech-Pfizer) and Spikevax (Moderna) for COVID19 in 2020. Whilst mRNA offers an array of advantages compared to other vaccine formats, there are still limitations and areas for further improvement. In this research, mRNA vaccines that generate localised immunity in the specific tissues that is tailored to eliminate infection have been designed.

Towards unlocking the potential of superconductivity to facilitate clean, sustainable energy production, this field of research develops engineering approaches, which enable the development of all-electric aircraft that use superconductive motors and generators. The research also supports the development of clean, sustainable fusion energy with an optical-fibre sensing technology, as a key component in sustainable commercial fusion-energy plant development.

With a focus on research that involves adapting high-temperature superconductors (HTS) to space applications, this research spans the design, building and testing of hardware that enables it to work effectively and efficiently in space.

The reintroduction of kākā to Wellington City has presented new conservation challenges due to limited individual-based monitoring. Our project aims to develop an innovative AI-based tool for identifying individual kākā, significantly improving our knowledge of their movement and survival. By leveraging advanced machine learning techniques, this AI tool will overcome the limitations of traditional bird banding methods. In partnership with tangata whenua (Taranaki Whānui) and conservation organizations, this technology will enhance our ability to mitigate threats to urban kākā, including diseases and conflicts with humans, while expanding mātauranga and supporting the conservation of this taonga.