Dean's List 2024

This page is updated each month as new doctoral candidates are added to the Dean's List.

Chad Drake (Auckland Bioengineering Institute)
Thesis title: Non-Invasive Biomagnetic Imaging of the Stomach Validated by Electroanatomical Mapping
Main Supervisor: Dr Recep Avci
Co Supervisor: Dr Niranchan Paskaranandavadivel and Prof Leo Cheng

Fengyuan Zhen (Faculty of Arts)
Thesis title: Heisei (1989-2019) Evil Woman: Textualising Murderous Women in Contemporary Japan
Main Supervisor: Dr Nicole Perry
Co Supervisor: Dr Rumi Sakamoto

Xichen Chen (Faculty of Engineering)
Thesis title: Digital Technologies (DT) in the AEC Industry: Investigating Determinants Impacting DT Adoption & Developing a Transformative Roadmap Facilitating DT Implementation
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Alice Chang-Richards
Co Supervisor: Dr Yang Zou

Jena Macapagal Foliaki (Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences)
Thesis title: The role of stromal cells in the establishment of Glioblastoma tumour microenvironment immunosuppression
Main Supervisor: Dr Thomas Park
Co Supervisor: Prof Michael Dragunow

Juliana Tong (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Novel Cleavable Linkers for Antibody-Drug Conjugate Targeted
Cancer Therapy
Main Supervisor: Prof Dame Margaret Brimble
Co Supervisor: Dr Iman Kavianinia

Leo Baldwin-Ramult (Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries)
Thesis title: Symptoms in Silico: Psychoanalysis and Generative Computer Art
Main Supervisor: Dr Lucille Holmes
Co Supervisor: Dr Simon Ingram

Mie Riisom (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Organoruthenium Anticancer Agents: Analytical and Cell Biological Studies
Main Supervisor: Prof Christian Hartinger
Co Supervisor: Prof Bruno Fedrizzi and Assoc Prof Stephen Jamieson

Song Yang (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Spatio-temporal Graph Representation Learning
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Jiamou Liu
Co Supervisor: Dr Kaiqi Zhao

Alina Pavlova (Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences)
Thesis title: Developing multi-level interventions to facilitate compassion in healthcare
Main Supervisor: Prof Nathan Consedine
Co Supervisor: Assoc Prof Sarah-Jane Paine   

Felicia Fui Kueh Tai (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Assessing the landscape of pesticide risk for solitary ground-nesting bees
Main Supervisor: Dr David Pattemore
Co Supervisor: Prof Jacqueline Beggs

Kelsey Miller (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Evaluating large-scale sea urchin removal as a potential tool for restoring kelp forests
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Nick Shears
Co Supervisor: Dr Richard Taylor

Neil Birrell (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Insects as Food in Aotearoa New Zealand
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Greg Holwell
Co Supervisor: Prof Thomas Buckley and Dr Leilani Walker 

Shan Su (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Mathematical Modelling of Ion and Water Transport in Salivary Gland Duct Cells
Main Supervisor: Prof James Sneyd
Co Supervisor: Dr Vinod Suresh            

Emilie Rakete (Faculty of Arts)
Thesis title: Empire of Punishment: A Social Reproduction Theory of Mass Incarceration in Aotearoa
Main Supervisor: Prof Tracey McIntosh
Co Supervisor: Assoc Prof Campbell Jones

Robyn May (Auckland Bioengineering Institute)
Thesis title: Understanding Cardiovascular Remodelling Related to Preterm Birth: A Clinical and Computational Modelling Study
Main Supervisor: Dr Soroush Safaei
Co Supervisor: Prof Frank Bloomfield, Dr Finbar Argus, and Dr Gonzalo Maso Talou

Xiaofei Yang (Faculty of Engineering)
Thesis title: Automated Data Analysis for Bridge Visual Inspection Using Deep Learning Techniques
Main Supervisor: Dr Enrique del Rey Castillo
Co Supervisor: Prof Liam Wotherspoon and Dr Yang Zou

Aristotle Motii Nandy (Faculty of Education and Social Work)
Thesis title: A Philosophical Study on the Contestations in the Field of Character Education: The Case for an Ecological Worldview Systems Approach and its Significance for Meaning and Purpose
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Kirsten Locke
Co Supervisor: Prof Carol Mutch

Bethany Hardie (Faculty of Education and Social Work)
Thesis title: An Appreciative Inquiry into Effective Entrepreneurship Education in New Zealand
Main Supervisor: Dr Kerry Lee
Co Supervisor: Dr Camilla Highfield

Corinna Cerini (Faculty of Engineering)
Thesis title: Semi-Empirical Reduction of Spacecraft for Coupled Load Analysis Purposes
Main Supervisor: Prof Guglielmo Aglietti
Co Supervisor: Dr Vladislav Sorokin

Justin Sobion (Faculty of Law)
Thesis title: Earth Trusteeship – A Framework for a More Effective Approach to International Environmental Law and Governance
Main Supervisor: Prof Klaus Bosselmann
Co Supervisor: Assoc Prof Timothy Kuhner

Kim Locke (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Making Sense of International Students' Experiences when Transitioning to Undergraduate Mathematics: An Exploration of Mathematical Identities
Main Supervisor: Dr Igor' Kontorovich
Co Supervisor: Dr Lisa Darragh

Martha Aseta (Faculty of Education and Social Work)
Thesis title: The Laei Samoa Framework: Exploring the Long-Term Impacts of Samoan Bilingual/Immersion Education on the Lives of Samoan Graduates
Main Supervisor: Prof Melinda Webber
Co Supervisor: Prof Tony Trinick

Robin Murphy (Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences)
Thesis title: A Randomised, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Repeated Microdoses of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide in Healthy Volunteers
Main Supervisor: Dr Suresh Muthukumaraswamy
Co Supervisor: Assoc Prof David Menkes, Dr Rhys Ponton and Dr Rachael Sumner

Shahrokh Heidari (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Quantum Annealing in Computer Vision
Main Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Patrice Delmas
Co Supervisor: Dr Michael Dinneen and Prof. Cristian Calude

Yiting Zhong (Faculty of Education and Social Work)
Thesis title: Changing Patterns of Talk to Improve the High-level Reading Comprehension of Chinese Primary Rural Students
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Aaron Wilson
Co Supervisor: Dr Maree Davies

Yourong Wang (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Astrophysical Dynamics of Self-Gravitating Quantum Condensates
Main Supervisor: Prof Richard Easther
Co Supervisor: Prof Shaun Hendy

Zongda Li (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Temporal Cavity Solitons Driven in the Near-Zero and Normal Dispersion Regimes
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Miro Erkintalo
Co Supervisor: Dr Ray Xu, Assoc Prof Stuart Murdoch and Assoc Prof Stephane Coen

Chuanjie Chen (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Functional Properties and Molecular Structure of Lotus Seed Starch
Main Supervisor: Dr Fan Zhu
Co Supervisor: Dr Sunan Wang

Joanna Appleby (Faculty of Education and Social Work)
Thesis title: Trauma-Responsive Practice: A Qualitative Exploration of How Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Can Better Meet the Needs of Care-Experienced Young People in Aotearoa New Zealand
Main Supervisor: Dr Barbara Staniforth
Co-Supervisor: Dr Helene Connor and Prof Susan Kemp

Max Coombes (Faculty of Arts)
Thesis title: Phantom Memories and Phantom Worlds: Videogame Embodiment and the Uncanny
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Allan Cameron
Co Supervisor: Prof Neal Curtis

Saahil Chand (Faculty of Engineering)
Thesis title: Flexible Human-Centric Human-Robot Collaborative Assembly Automation
Main Supervisor: Dr Yuqian Lu
Co Supervisor: Dr Andrew McDaid and Prof Xun Xu

Esther Calje (Liggins Institute)
Thesis title: Addressing the evidence gaps to optimise care for women with more severe postpartum anaemia in Aotearoa, New Zealand
Main Supervisor: Prof. Katie Groom
Co Supervisor: Dr Charlotte Oyston and Dr Joy Marriott

Kaixuan Wang (Faculty of Education and Social Work)
Thesis title: Task Complexity and Learner Individual Differences: Effects on Chinese EFL Learners’ Writing Development in Collaborative Writing
Main Supervisor: Prof Lawrence Zhang
Co Supervisor: Dr Maria Cooper

Rachel Jaros (Liggins Institute)
Thesis title: Multiomic Insights into SARS-CoV-2 Outcomes and Cardiovascular Associations
Main Supervisor: Prof Justin O'Sullivan
Co Supervisor: Dr Evgeniia Golovina

Selassie Tagoh (Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences)
Thesis title: The Cortical Limits to Visual Acuity
Main Supervisor: Prof Steven Dakin
Co Supervisor: Assoc Prof Sam Schwarzkopf

Wallis Bland (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Improving realism in biogeographic simulation and inference with state-dependent speciation and extinction models using GPlates palaeogeography and the Julia programming language
Main Supervisor: Dr Nicholas Matzke
Co Supervisor: Assoc Prof Shane Lavery

Godrick Oketch (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Saddlepoint Techniques in Statistics: Theory, Tools, and Applications
Main Supervisor: Prof Rachel Fewster
Co Supervisor: Dr Jesse Goodman

Krishna Reddy Maryada (Faculty of Engineering)
Thesis title: Natural Convection Boundary Layer in a Stably Stratified Medium: Stability, Transition and Turbulence
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Stuart Norris
Co Supervisor: Dr Michael MacDonald and Dr Priyanka Dhopade

Lincoln Dam (Faculty of Education and Social Work)
Thesis title: Be(com)ing Ethically Responsible Relations: Asian Communities and Te Tiriti o Waitangi
Main Supervisor: Prof Stephen May
Co Supervisor: Dr Te Kawehau Hoskins

Neset Tan (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Explainable and Automated Scientific Fact-Checking with Neural Networks
Main Supervisor: Prof Michael Witbrock
Co Supervisor: Prof Mark Gahegan

Tim Hartill (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Teaching Smaller Language Models To Generalise To Unseen
Compositional Questions
Main Supervisor: Dr Patricia Riddle
Co Supervisor: Prof Michael Witbrock

Yujie Zhang (Faculty of Education and Social Work)
Thesis title: Effects of Task Complexity and Individual Differences on EFL Writing Performance
Main Supervisor: Prof Lawrence Zhang
Co Supervisor: Dr Barbara Ormond

Yuming Li (Business School)
Thesis title: Sentiment and Emotion Analysis of Social Media Text: Multilingual Fine-Grained Low-Resource Personalised and Explainable AI Approaches
Main Supervisor: Dr Johnny Chan
Co Supervisor: Dr Gabrielle Peko and Prof David Sundaram

Mahyar Ghanadi (Faculty of Engineering)
Thesis title: Occurrence, Fate, and Disinfection Byproduct Formation Potential of Selected Plastics in Aqueous Environment
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof Lokesh Padhye
Co Supervisor: Assoc Prof Melanie Kah             

Niall Malone (Faculty of Science)
Thesis title: Nano-Catalytic Surfaces Prepared by Ion Implantation for Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution
Main Supervisor: Prof Geoffrey Waterhouse
Co Supervisor: Prof Robert Anderson

Thalia Babbage (Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences)
Thesis title: Non-invasive therapeutic targeting of the human chemoreflexes
Main Supervisor: Assoc Prof James Fisher
Co Supervisor: Prof Julian Paton