Four University of Waikato academics have been honoured by Royal Society Te Apārangi – three receiving prestigious awards and one a four-year fellowship.
Royal Society Te Apārangi held three regional Research Honours Aotearoa ceremonies this week to recognise researchers, scholars, and innovators throughout New Zealand who have achieved excellence in their chosen fields.
PhD candidate Sofia Rauzi won the Hatherton Award, presented for the best scientific paper by a PhD student in mathematics or physical, earth, or information sciences, for her paper illustrating how lithium isotopes in sedimentary rock illustrate historic climate change events.
Sofia says writing and publishing a paper for the world to read has been a nerve-racking experience, and hearing that it has been well received has been “very rewarding and such a relief”.
PhD candidate Sofia Rauzi
“Receiving the Hatherton Award for this project has been so encouraging and motivated me to get a move-on with my current work. This project is as much [Senior Lecturer and Sofia’s PhD supervisor] Terry Isson’s as it is mine and I’m so grateful we got to work on it together.”
Professor Tahu Kukutai (Ngāti Tiipa, Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāti Kinohaku, Te Aupōuri) was awarded the Te Rangi Hiroa Medal for outstanding work in social history, cultural diversity, socioeconomics, or medical anthropology.
Professor Kukutai says that winning this medal means a lot to her.
“Te Rangi Hiroa was an incredible scholar. He was the first Māori Fellow of the New Zealand Institute, which later became the Royal Society. His work on Māori health is an important resource for Māori demography, and I’ve referred to it many times in my own research. In 2018, I was fortunate to be able to attend Te Ra o Te Rangi Hiroa at Urenui marae. So receiving this award, in his name, is a huge honour.”
Professor Tahu Kukutai
Professor Kukutai thanked and acknowledged her whānau, “especially my dad Karu Kukutai and the whānau at Te Tira Rangahau o Ngāti Tiipa, my colleages at Ngā Pae o Te Māramatanga and Te Ngira Insitute for Population Research, and my tuakana Prof Tracey McIntosh who nominated me for the award”.
Emeritus Professor Carolyn (Kim) King was presented with the Thomson Medal, awarded for outstanding contribution to the organisation, support, and application of research in science, technology, or the humanities.
The recognition honours her five decades spent teaching, researching, and publishing in zoology and ecology, and her international standing as an authority on small mammals.
“The Award represents the last and most deeply appreciated endpoint of my life’s work,” Professor King says.
Emeritus Professor Carolyn (Kim) King
She says her list of acknowledgements takes up two whole pages in her recently published book Stoat in the Dock, but she would like to pay special tribute to Honorary Lecturer John Innes and a long list of other colleagues who constantly supported her, “beginning with the indefatigable Professor Bruce Clarkson”.
“If I live to be 100, I will never be able to thank them all.”
And last Friday, Royal Society Te Apārangi announced Dr Apriel Jolliffe Simpson (Ngāti Tūwharetoa ki Taupō) as the recipient of a Mana Tūāpapa Future Leader Fellowship.
These fellowships are awarded over four years to promising early-career researchers to support the development of their leadership skills and disciplinary impact.
Dr Apriel Jolliffe Simpson
Dr Jolliffe Simpson’s fellowship will involve developing tools to assess perpetrators of family violence to identify their risk of repeat offending.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research Professor Gary Wilson says he is pleased to congratulate the University’s Royal Society Te Apārangi awardees.
“I’m proud of the University’s scholars recognised with honours and grants this week, and of the hard work all our researchers and supporting staff keep doing to make an impact,” he says.
