Ambassador applauds excellence and success of University's research

The European Union ambassador to New Zealand, His Excellency Lawrence Meredith said the success rate for New Zealand researchers in the world’s largest research fund Horizon Europe demonstrated the excellence of research at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.

Ambassador Meredith said, “New Zealand is the first global partner in the Horizon Europe fund. New Zealand needs these partnerships, but so do we.

“To date there have been almost 20 successfully funded projects from New Zealand. On average one in ten proposals succeed. You are at one in four – that's how excellent your research is.”

Horizon Europe is the largest research fund in the world at 95 billion euros over seven years.

The ambassador was the keynote speaker at the annual 'Hīkina kia Tutuki, Rise to the Challenge: Researchers with Global Impact' event, held at the Fale Pasifika.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation Professor Frank Bloomfield said, “Research is our lifeblood. It is what we do, is our passion and is where we choose to put our energies, our expertise, our skills, our time and our commitment.

"We do this because we believe in the power of research to improve lives and solve problems, whether that's through transmission of knowledge to our students or through impact on our community.”

He congratulated researchers whose work has been recognised globally. The University has seven researchers in the 2024 Clarivate Highly Cited researcher rankings that identify the top one percent of researchers worldwide. There are 289 University researchers who feature in the Stanford Elsevier list of the top two percent of researchers, an improvement of 64 on the previous year.

Bloomfield acknowledges the challenges universities face. “The very purpose of universities, at least in the anglophone world, is under the microscope.”

But rather than ‘circle the wagons’, he said the response was to be steadfast in the pursuit of excellence and delivery of impact.

“We must remain even more active in communicating what we do.”

He cited evidence of that impact. The University of Auckland sits in the upper quartile globally for all measures of research quality. For Australia and New Zealand, the University ranked in the top five for all measures related to commercial outcomes from publicly funded research and was the leading institution in both countries for the number of spin-out companies supported from its research.

University academics published nearly 400 papers in journals regarded as in the top one percent of their fields last year. These include Science, Nature and The Lancet in 2024.

At the event, six leading researchers presented on their work. They were Professor Chris Bullen, FMHS, Dame Professor Juliet Gerrard, Science, Professor Ngaire Kerse, FMHS, Professor Julian Paton, FMHS, Professor Christine Rubie-Davies, Arts and Education and Dr Ziyun Wang, Science.