Two University of Waikato researchers have received a significant boost to their respective research areas after being awarded the Mana Tūānuku Research Leadership Fellowship.
The fellowships were awarded by the Royal Society Te Apārangi to Dr Joanna Hicks and Dr Ang McGaughran.
Introduced in 2024, the fellowship is designed to strengthen researchers’ capacity to deliver outstanding, high-impact research while fostering leadership across their disciplines, host institutions, and New Zealand’s wider science, innovation, and technology system.
The fellowships are valued at $1.16m over four years.
Dr Ang McGaughran, Senior Lecturer, Ecology, Biodiversity and Animal Behaviour
Dr McGaughran's fellowship will fund research into how differences in the genomes of blowfly species affect their invasiveness traits.
Dr Ang McGaughran
Invasive species pose a growing threat to ecosystems worldwide, with New Zealand’s historically isolated environments particularly vulnerable.
Although extensive research has been conducted over several decades, scientists still face challenges in predicting whether a pest species will establish in a new environment and how widely it may spread once established.
Dr McGaughran, who is a senior lecturer in Ecology, Biodiversity and Animal behaviour, will use advanced ecological, genomic, and behavioural approaches alongside machine learning and other computer-based analyses in her research.
By identifying the factors that enable species to become successful invaders, the research aims to support earlier, more targeted biosecurity interventions, helping to protect New Zealand’s taonga flora and fauna.
The fellowship will also contribute to building critical national capability in biosecurity responses to invasive pests that cause significant environmental and agricultural damage.
Dr Joanna Hicks, Senior Lecturer, Biomedical Sciences
Dr Hicks will use the fellowship to lead a multi-disciplinary team to look at ways to combat antibiotic resistance in the bacterium responsible for gonorrhoea.
Left untreated, gonorrhoea can cause severe health complications.
Dr Joanna Hicks
Antibotics introduced in the late 1930s made gonorrhoea a curable disease, but neisseria bacteria has since developed a resistance to every treatment used against it. This has resulted in gonorrheoa rates increasing in not just New Zealand but also globally.
The Mana Tūānuku Research Leader Fellowship will allow Dr Hicks, who is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Dean of Postgraduate Research in the Division of Health, to use cutting-edge techniques to understand how gonorrohoea disease develops and to identify new antimicrobials to tackle drug-resistant infections.
The research brings together a multidisciplinary team spanning biochemistry, microbiology, synthetic chemistry, immunology, sexual health and Māori health research. This work strengthens New Zealand’s capacity to address antibiotic resistance and improve health outcomes.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research Professor Gary Wilson says the fellowships represent an outstanding achievement for both Dr Hicks and Dr McGaughran.
“These awards give our researchers the opportunity to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing New Zealand and the world,” he says. “The fellowships will enable high-impact research in both fields and further strengthen the University of Waikato’s reputation for world-leading research.”
