Early-career researchers encouraged by Rutherford Foundation awards

Dr Julie Spray, Faculty of Health and Medical Studies and Dr Tristan McArley, Faculty of Science, were awarded Two-year New Zealand Postdoctoral Fellowships. Amelia Cordwell, also from the Faculty of Science received a three-year Cambridge Rutherford Memorial PhD Scholarship.

The funding opportunities are intended to build human capability in research, science and technology (including social sciences and the humanities). They support early-career researchers who demonstrate a passion for research, and have a strong sense of the purpose and benefits of research to Aotearoa New Zealand.

University of Auckland Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, Professor Jim Metson noted that 2020 had been a challenging year and it was very heartening to see early-career researchers recognised for the outstanding work they had done despite these challenges.

“These awards will help build a platform for their future careers. The subjects in which they carry out research – child health, ocean health, and planetary science – have global implications and the work they do at this stage of their careers could easily develop into internationally significant research programmes.”

Dr Julie Spray, Passive patients, active participants, or responsible self-managers? Children’s involvement in chronic illness management in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Asthma is a leading cause of hospitalisation of children in Aotearoa. Outside of hospital, however, children and their caregivers must take responsibility for managing this chronic illness. The ‘self-management’ approach to chronic illnesses was designed with adult patients in mind. For child patients, this responsibility is shifted to caregivers, with the vague expectation that children will ‘transition’ during adolescence to independent self-management.

Julie’s research will investigate how health professionals, families, and the affected children themselves think about asthma management. This interdisciplinary project will determine how these stakeholders negotiate children’s participation in, and responsibility for, the management of their chronic illness. In partnership with the National Hauora Coalition, the findings will be used to inform the delivery of health services in Aotearoa New Zealand. This work will also contribute towards developing culturally-responsive and inclusive models that integrate children as participants in, without holding them responsible for, their own healthcare

Dr Tristan McArley, Tolerance to climate warming in New Zealand snapper (Chrysophrys auratus).

Our oceans are warming due to global climate change. This has major consequences for fish because as temperatures rise, so do their energy demands. In fish, increased temperatures are predicted to impair growth, alter their geographic ranges and cause local extinctions. Snapper is a fish of high importance to Aotearoa New Zealand but how snapper populations will respond to climate change is not known.

Tristan will use snapper to investigate the impacts of global warming across multiple levels of animal organisation: from subcellular, cellular, organ and whole animal levels. This will provide valuable insights into the impacts of climate warming on snapper, and the capacity for snapper to adapt to altered habitats. The knowledge generated in this study will be essential for the sustainable management of snapper and will improve our understanding of how fish cope, or fail to cope, with climate change.

A three-year Cambridge Rutherford Memorial PhD Scholarship has been awarded to: Amelia Cordwell, Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics: Planet-Disk Interactions.

On Earth, fluid dynamics is the study of liquids and gasses. In space, dust can also act like a fluid. The study of fluid dynamics can apply to many astrophysical processes, including the formation of planets around stars. Young stars are formed with large rotating discs of dust and gas around them. Solid particles within this disc eventually merge to form planets. Yet, we do not yet fully understand the physical processes that lead to planet formation from a protoplanetary disc.

Amelia will complete a PhD at the University of Cambridge, studying these disc-planet interactions with two main areas of interest.

• After initial formation, gravitational interactions with the disc cause massive planets to migrate to different orbits. Current theories predict a migration towards the star on a time scale much faster than the lifetime of the protoplanetary disc. This presents problems for planetary formation theories, which need to be resolved.
  

• Secondly, complex substructure has been observed within many protoplanetary discs. Young planets represent the best candidates for explaining the multiple gaps and rings of dust that have been observed. Amelia’s research will begin to connect the details of the physical processes within protoplanetary discs that lead to planet formation. This research will be at the leading edge of planetary science.

The Rutherford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships and PhD Scholarships are supported by New Zealand government funding and administered by Royal Society Te Apārangi.