University researchers awarded $24.3m from 2025 Marsden funding round

The 2025 Marsden fund has awarded University of Auckland researchers a total of $24.3m, including $3m for research exploring the fundamental nature of the universe through the interpretation of gravitational waves and a new telescope that will regularly capture images of the entire night sky.

Professors Renate Meyer and Richard Easther from the Faculty of Science, said the funding would contribute to our understanding of the universe and fundamental science.

They said: “We are enormously excited — this grant will support a national network of scientists who connect New Zealand to two of the world’s most exciting projects in fundamental science.

“It will have a huge impact on students and early career scientists, embedding them in teams working on deep problems, and developing advanced computational and statistical techniques. Given the pressure on the fund, it is a real honour to be trusted to do this work”

The funding enables New Zealand’s continued collaboration with the international LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) consortium, a gravitational wave observatory to be launched into space and the Vera C Rubin Observatory in northern Chile.

This new instrument will image the entire night sky every four nights, providing information on topics ranging from small objects passing through the solar system to the overall structure of the universe.

Arts and Education

Professor Thegn Ladefoged
Ko te Rerenga o te Matuku (The flight of the bittern): Interfacing Archaeology with history, philosophy, and mātauranga for thriving futures $853,000
 

Auckland Bioengineering Institute

Professor Leo Cheng
Lighting up the dark side of the stomach $941,000

Dr Kunal Gupta
Exploring virtual reality tools for early detection of depression in Aotearoa’s emerging adults using emotional memory and bio signals $360,000

Dr Vickie Shim
Unlocking Brain Biomechanics: AI-driven digital twin modeling for neurodegenerative disease monitoring $941,000
 

Business School

Associate Professor Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy
Who benefits from up-zoning? Evaluating the socio-economic effects of New Zealand's zoning reforms $853,000

Professor Andrew Taberner
Exploring how heat and temperature mediate jet formation during needle-free and micro-needle delivery of viscous drugs $941,000

Engineering and Design

Professor Naresh Singhal
Engineering metabolic transitions to combat antimicrobial resistance development in freshwater microorganisms $941,000

Dr Shanghai Wei
Mechanistic insights into high-performance sustainable batteries $941,000

 

Medical and Health Sciences

Dr David Crossman
How does respiratory heart rate variable pacing improve the function of the failing heart? $941,000

Associate Professor Julie Lim
Unlocking the clock: bringing to “light” the mechanisms involved in antioxidant regulation in the lens $941,000

Professor Johanna Montgomery
Identifying the multicellular basis that controls heart rhythm $941,000

Dr Taylor Stevenson
Targeting brain border immune pathways to enhance waste clearance in Parkinson's disease $360,000

Dr Qian (Claire) Wang
Understanding how mast cell and histamine transporter could be targeted to intervene in obesity $941,000
 

Science

Dr Samantha Arras
How do new chromosomes evolve? $360,000

Dr Matt Edwards
Preparing for the next galactic core-collapse supernova with deep neural networks $360,000

Professor Jan Eldridge
Unveiling the mysteries of the earliest stars and galaxies in the Universe $944,000

Professor Nicola Gaston
More than skin deep: understanding the native oxide of gallium $941,000

Dr Pedram Hekmati
From knots to manifolds: new techniques and applications $683,000

Associate Professor Simone Linz
Combinatorially explosive? Unravelling the web of life with new combinatorial techniques for semi-directed networks $613,000

Dr Samuel Mehr
Preservation of auditory perception in dementia and the role of music in dementia care $853,000

Professor Renate Meyer
Astrostatistics, interstellar asteroids, supernovae, binary stellar remnants, supermassive black holes, galaxies, ultralight fields and the early Universe from Rubin and LISA. $3,000,000

Associate Professor Stuart Murdoch
Kerr optical frequency combs in tapered fiber resonators $941,000

Professor Claire Postlethwaite
Exotic behaviour in intransitive competition networks $683,000

Dr Priscila Madi Salloum
Rethinking quantitative genetics: microbiomes as drivers of trait diversification, $360,000

Dr Molly Swanson
Also member of the Centre for Brain Research
The good and the DAMed: can we make disease-associated microglia (DAMs) good again? $360,000

Dr Melissa Tacy
Quantifying energy dependence phenomena for rough scatterers $683,000

Professor Tom ter Elst
New perspectives on elliptic boundary problems $584,000

Dr Jurij Volcic
Noncommutative functions: from local data to global structure $360,000

Dr Ziyun Wang
Air-to-Ammonia Conversion through integrated plasma reactor and electrochemical Cells $941,000

Dr Talia Xu
Harnessing ambient light: A low-power solution for environmental sensor communication $360,000

Dr Tianliang Zhang
Accurately deflected magnetic field for thrust vector control in space electric propulsion, $360,000