Awards for the best and brightest of New Zealand science

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A University of Auckland staff accountable for optimising life-saving remedy for oxygen-deprived infants has gained the 2025 Prime Minister’s Science Prize.

The awards had been handed out in a ceremony in Wellington on Tuesday night time.

The Fetal Physiology and Neuroscience group has been researching the results of delicate mind cooling for resuscitated newborns for over three many years.

The therapeutic cooling regime developed by this staff is now the customary of care globally and has saved hundreds of infants worldwide from loss of life and incapacity.

The staff included co-leaders Professor Alistair Gunn and Professor Laura Bennet, together with Associate Professor Joanne Davidson.

Sadly, Gunn died in May, earlier than the prize was formally awarded, however after he had been notified.

In an interview with the Royal Society in March 2026 he mentioned of the award: “Winning this Prize is a reflection of the last 30 years of work by us, by thousands of people around the world, and it’s also a recognition of the trust that families placed in us at the very beginning, when we had no evidence that it was either efficacious or safe, and yet were willing to trust us to try.”

For Bennet it has been an extended journey of discovery, and an instance of how ‘experimental, blue-skies analysis’ may end up in sudden constructive outcomes.

The staff will use the analysis cash that comes with the prize to proceed to research how hypothermia impacts the mind, and to look into potential remedies for preterm infants with mind damage, for whom delicate cooling is commonly not appropriate.

The MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist prize was awarded to Dr Luke Harrington, a bodily local weather scientist at the University of Waikato.

Harrington leads the Climate Extremes and Societal Impact group, which focuses on quantifying the results of local weather change on the chance and depth of excessive climate occasions in New Zealand.

He says after an excessive climate occasion, journalists usually ask him ‘is that this local weather change?’. To which the reply isn’t any, he says. “It’s never only climate change. Of course, you have a whole sequence of ingredients which are completely natural, which need to come together… The question is how much worse or what additional change came along as a result of a warmer world.”

Though it’s troublesome to do, the analysis of his group has been capable of tease out these variations and put a quantity on it. Harrington informed Our Changing World that he hopes this work shall be utilized by decision-makers to arrange for the future.

“With every tenth of a degree of warming, we know that these things are getting worse and the direction of travel looks like this… And you can use a lot of that information to at least start to prepare adaptation measures.”

It was her time in Japan instructing English that Nan Walden-Moeung (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki) credit with each discovering her love of instructing and the inspiration to embrace her Māori whakapapa.

A expertise trainer at Wellington East Girls College, ‘Whaea Nan’ has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Science Teacher Prize.

She makes use of Mātauranga Māori values as the overarching framework for her training method, she says. “Taking the values of whanaungatanga, manakatanga, kaitiakitanga, and using them to inform my practice, especially for my students. How to take care of them first, how to believe in them, how they can believe in themselves, and then from there how we can use their identity, who they are, to then create something that reinforces that.”

Using her style business coaching and profession background, Walden-Moeung combines conventional and modern approaches to korowai-making to supply alternative for college students – whether or not that is harvesting and making ready harakeke, or utilizing a stitching machine, and even 3D printing.

Four years in the past, she developed a showcase and competitors, Kohara2Shine, for college students to show their design and expertise work.

Walden-Moeung informed Our Changing World that after 20 years of instructing, the best half of her job helps a pupil get to a spot of confidence in their very own skills.

“You come across a girl who is a little bit downtrodden, and a little bit down on herself… And you teach them how to use a sewing machine, and you show them how to stitch some feathers, and you make a korowai with them, and they display it at Kohara2Shine. And they’re like, oh, actually, I’m da bomb. I’m real cool. And I got this.”

Early household fossil-hunting street journeys are what Associate Professor Nic Rawlence credit with driving each his curiosity in paleoecology and science communication.

The head of the paleogenetics group at the University of Otago, which researches the prehistoric ecology of New Zealand, Associate Professor Rawlence has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize.

He speaks usually about his lab’s analysis and findings, and what they imply, however he additionally believes it is necessary to contribute his scientific data to related conversations, to assist inform debate.

“It’s very much, where are the gaps in the scientific commentary or the science news media where I think I could make a difference having that critic and conscience role? Being able to provide real time critical commentary to dispel misinformation and provide that information for the public to make free prior and informed decisions about whether they sign on to things.”

Recently, Associate Professor Rawlence has been including his voice and experience to the matter of moa de-extinction, following the July 2025 announcement by Colossal Biosciences.

He will use the prize cash that comes with the award to study extra about the best strategies of science communication to make use of with totally different teams of individuals, to pay for workshops for his college students to upskill in communication, and to jot down a well-liked science ebook.

Jesse Rumball-Smith has a busy time forward. Just two days after accepting the Prime Minister’s Future Scientist Prize he’ll be heading off to start his undergraduate research at Harvard University.

He’s undecided but what he’ll find yourself finding out, however he imagines it will likely be “Something STEM-y. Science to help people”.

Having come runner-up in the Future Scientist Prize final yr, Rumball-Smith had two tasks shortlisted this yr. The analysis that gained him the award is an app geared toward closing the socio-economic hole in New Zealand’s street loss of life toll.

While newer automobiles are dripping with security options, these of us nonetheless driving our older automobiles are statistically extra more likely to be in an accident. This reality led Rumball-Smith to his analysis query, “How can I use the supercomputer that’s in everybody’s pocket, their smartphone, to bridge this divide?”

Dubbed ‘a greater backseat driver’, the app makes use of the cellphone’s entrance and again cameras to observe the street and driver’s face and then talk again to the driver.

The venture has taken three years thus far and one yr was spent on understanding behavioural psychology, says Rumball-Smith, to determine the best messaging in order that the consumer would not simply mute the cellphone. “So things like, ‘Hey, you’re only going to arrive home three seconds quicker. Why don’t we just slow down? Your risk of crashing is two times higher’. And the phone will actually speak those messages out and it will know the ideal time and the ideal kind of framing for those messages.”

While he’ll be taking a break on its improvement as he settles into his research, Rumball-Smith hopes the app might be finalised in the future and will help scale back New Zealand’s street toll.

Reflecting the authorities’s concentrate on analysis translation and commercialisation, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon introduced a brand new awards class for 2026 at the ceremony.

The Prime Minister’s Innovation Prize will recognise success in translating scientific data into real-world services or products to benefit New Zealand.

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