1 November 2018
Twenty new Fellows and three Honorary Fellows have been elected to the Academy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi for
their distinction in research and advancement of science, technology or the humanities. They are world leaders in topics
that include, in the humanities, global justice and migration, public economics, sociocultural theory, intellectual
property and constitutional law. In the sciences, topics include enzymes, ultrafast lasers, reproductive and eye health,
genetic diseases, medical modelling and sensors, pest control, ecological networks and earthquakes. They will be
inducted early next year, 100 years after the first 20 Fellows were inducted in 1919.
Being made a Fellow is an honour that recognises true international distinction in research, scholarship and the
advancement of knowledge. Fellows can use the post-nominal ‘FRSNZ’ after their name to indicate this honour.
Chair of the Academy and Royal Society Te Apārangi Vice President Richard Blaikie says a two-day event is planned for
14-15 February next year to celebrate the centenary. There will be a Fellows’ Admission Day at Royal Society Te Apārangi
in Wellington, which will include a chance for the new Fellows to present their research to the public, followed by a
celebratory dinner. The following day the Society will hold a symposium with the theme ‘Multiple forms of research excellence’.
“The diverse backgrounds and multiple areas of expertise of the newly-elected Fellows adds to the breadth of knowledge
held collectively by the Academy, which supports the wider work the Society does to inform New Zealanders on matters of
public importance.”
“On behalf of the Academy and Society, I heartily congratulate all the new Fellows. The election process is rigorous and
being elected recognises truly stellar achievements in uncovering new knowledge and innovative scholarship.”
The new Fellows are:
Professor Angus Macfarlane, University of Canterbury
Professor Carolyn (Kim) King, University of Waikato
Professor Cather Simpson, University of Auckland
Professor Charles McGhee, University of Auckland
Professor Cynthia Farquhar, University of Auckland
Professor David Bryant, University of Otago
Professor David Williams, University of Auckland
Professor Emily Parker, Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Gillian Brock, University of Auckland
Professor Jason Tylianakis, University of Canterbury
Professor John Creedy, Victoria University of Wellington
Professor John Gibson, University of Waikato
Dr Laura Wallace, GNS Science
Professor Linda Nikora, University of Auckland
Professor Margaret Hyland, Victoria University of Wellington
Professor Merryn Tawhai, University of Auckland
Professor Robyn Longhurst, University of Waikato
Professor Simon Malpas, University of Auckland
Professor Stephen Robertson, University of Otago
Professor Susy Frankel, Victoria University of Wellington
The Society also announced the election of three Honorary Fellows. The election of Honorary Fellows aims to encourage
strong ties with leading international scientists and scholars and New Zealand’s research community.
Professor Thomas Higham, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Professor Ichiro Kawachi, Harvard University, USA
Distinguished Professor Warrick Couch, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Read more on the new Fellows:
Professor Margaret Hyland is a world authority in surface chemistry, engineering and processes. Vice-Provost (Research)
at Victoria University of Wellington, her expertise includes surface properties, structures of materials, industrial
reactions involving pollutant gases and materials degradation. In addition to her strong academic standing, her work has
had substantial global impact through application to aluminium smelting and other industrial processing. She was awarded
the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s Pickering Medal in 2015 for her pioneering work to reduce fluoride emissions from the
aluminium industry.
Professor Gillian Brock is one of the most significant scholars currently working in the field of global justice.
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, her scholarship spans ethics, political and social philosophy,
several applied ethics fields and various interdisciplinary areas including those at the intersection of philosophy and
public policy. She was a recent Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and joint winner
of the Amartya Sen Prize from Yale University. A prolific author, Professor Brock’s work regularly appears in top-tier
international academic journals and her books are published by leading academic presses. She holds numerous editorial
positions for esteemed philosophy and multidisciplinary journals, and serves on several prominent international
committees.
Professor Jason Tylianakis has achieved a steep trajectory across many measures of research excellence in the area of
how environmental changes affect interactions between species and their contribution to ecosystem functioning. A
Professor in Terrestrial Ecology at the University of Canterbury, he uses field data and the latest statistical methods
to build up large networks to describe the interactions between species. These networks can identify which species are
most vulnerable to extinction, based on their location in the network, and this knowledge can be applied in reverse to
understand how ecosystems develop and recover. Professor Tylianakis’ achievements have been recognised through research
awards and he was one of ten inaugural Rutherford Discovery Fellows, awarded by Royal Society Te Apārangi. He has also
served the scientific community through many national and international roles and attracted and mentored many students.
Professor Carolyn “Kim” King is a specialist in animal ecology, particularly of small rodents and mustelids. Adjunct
Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Waikato, her research covers the areas of ecology, behaviour and
genetics and her impact includes contributions to conservation, including work on improved methods of monitoring and
control of rodents and mustelids. A pest management pioneer, the British Mammal Society awarded her their highest
honour, the Mammal Society Medal, for her important work on mustelids and their predatory impacts on native species,
combining fundamental and applied research. In addition to her research combining the latest technologies with extensive
field observations and sampling, she is a committed science communicator, evidenced by her own writing and editorship of
the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand (1983-2001) and New Zealand Journal of Zoology (1991-2009, plus Senior
Editor 2010-2015).
Enzymes are the catalysts that make life possible. Professor Emily Parker has made a sustained contribution to the
understanding of enzyme function at the molecular and organism level. This new knowledge has been applied to the design
and synthesis of enzyme inhibitors as potential drugs, especially antibiotics. It has also led to the use of enzymes as
tools in the manufacture of valuable bioactive compounds. Based at the Ferrier Research Institute at Victoria University
of Wellington, her research has been published extensively in high quality scientific journals and she has been a
regular invited speaker at international symposia. She has contributed to the next generation of scientists through her
post-graduate teaching and has served with distinction in leadership roles in national and trans-Tasman scientific
organisations.
Professor Simon Malpas is principal investigator of the Implantable Devices Group at the Auckland Bioengineering
Institute at the University of Auckland. His group is at the forefront of the development of the next generation of
medical devices utilising IP in the areas of wireless power, communication and sensing of pressure. His initial
fundamental research in the area of cardiovascular control led him to develop technology to address basic science
questions around how the brain controls blood pressure. This led to medical devices for monitoring brain pressure after
trauma and power transfer through the skin for fully implantable heart pumps. Three spinout companies created by him
have generated more than $22m of export revenue to date. Royal Society Te Apārangi awarded him the Pickering Medal in
2014 for the development and commercialisation of implantable wireless sensors that monitor physiological processes in
the body.
Professor Linda Waimarie Nikora is an outstanding Māori scholar and leader whose research has been positively
transformative for Māori and for the discipline of psychology. With colleagues, she has led important research
investigations into Māori health, development, culture change and resilience, death, Indigenous psychology, Māori
sexuality, and media representations. She has written five books including her co-authored award-winning book Mau Moko:
The World of Māori Tattoo, and numerous research articles. Her research into the development of a kaupapa Maori
curriculum fundamentally changed ways of working, researching, and training for indigenous psychologists worldwide, and
she has grown a new generation of Māori psychologists. Actively involved in the life of her iwi, Professor Nikora
contributed fundamental research instrumental to the return of Te Urewera National Park to Tuhoe.
Dr Laura Wallace is a globally-recognised scientist who uses land surveying (geodetic), seismological and geological
information to understand complex large-scale tectonic processes occurring at plate boundary zones. Soon after her
arrival in New Zealand she discovered the first slow slip event at New Zealand’s Hikurangi subduction zone, and since
then she has made these benign events and their relationship to catastrophic earthquakes central to her research. A
geophysicist at GNS Science, Dr Wallace has provided outstanding intellectual leadership in the study of plate boundary
processes, including galvanising a large international group of scientists and raising funds to support multinational
research into the Hikurangi subduction zone, which may be one of the greatest natural hazards faced by New Zealand. Her
research and leadership have placed New Zealand at the forefront worldwide of studies on plate boundary processes and
hazards.
Professor John Gibson is an outstanding economist who has made significant contributions to knowledge around migration,
particularly from the Pacific, and about survey-based measurement of living standards. He has led the Pacific Island-New
Zealand Migration Study (PINZMS) for over a decade to measure impacts of skilled, seasonal, and random ballot-based
migration from the Pacific. His scholarship is recognised at the highest levels including the World Bank, the Asian
Development Bank and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has received prestigious national awards and is ranked in the
top 0.4% of economists worldwide. He has made major contributions to public policy especially in the area of Pacific-New
Zealand migration policies. His work has spread beyond the Pacific and has become the new norm for design, measurement,
and analysis. He has supervised a large number of successful PhD students who have become outstanding researchers in
their own right.
Professor Susy Frankel is an international research leader and preeminent New Zealand-based scholar in international
intellectual property law and its links with international trade, as well as the protection of Indigenous peoples'
knowledge. She is Chair in Intellectual Property and International Trade at the School of Law at Victoria University of
Wellington. She was president (2015-2017) of the global intellectual property researchers’ association, ATRIP, and has
been a visiting professor at leading universities including New York University and the University of Strasbourg. Her
standing is confirmed by scholarly citations of her work and the many invitations to speak at events internationally.
Professor Frankel’s scholarship has influenced the development of New Zealand’s intellectual property law and the
interpretation of international agreements in the formation of domestic policy. Also, she is at the forefront of law
working with other disciplines.
Professor John Creedy has had—and continues to have—a remarkable and influential academic career covering public
economics, labour economics, income distribution and the history of economic analysis. He has consistently aimed to
address substantive and topical issues relevant to current public policy, both in New Zealand and overseas. A Professor
in the School of Accounting and Commercial Law at Victoria University of Wellington, Professor Creedy has made a vital
contribution to New Zealand through his work at Treasury and his research on important ‘real world’ policy issues,
including superannuation, welfare and tax. He is one of this country’s most respected and prolific academic economists,
and has an outstanding record of collaboration and mentorship of younger scholars. Professor Creedy’s innovative
research has made a significant impact here and internationally in the field of public economics.
Professor Cather Simpson is internationally renowned for her contributions to fundamental new knowledge about how light
interacts with matter. A Professor of Physics and Chemistry at the University of Auckland, her research has achieved
seminal insight into multi-disciplinary areas ranging from ultrafast dynamics of heme proteins, laser-generated force on
sperm, and laser beam-shaping to transform materials at the microscale. She also applies that research to address
important practical challenges, and thereby generates transformative impact through both. Since 2012, she has delivered
11 plenary and keynote lectures and garnered $23.9m in external research funding as principal investigator. She is
founding inventor in two science startup companies, including Silicon Valley award-winner Engender. In 2016, she was
Kiwinet’s Baldwins Researcher Entrepreneur and BNZ Supreme winner, and a Ministry of Primary Industries Champion.
Stellar outreach and teaching, including a National Teaching Excellence award, complement her exceptional research
strengths.
Professor Cynthia Farquhar’s objective is to provide evidence to improve women’s health. Postgraduate Professor of
Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Auckland and a consultant clinician with the Auckland District Health
Board, she has initiated and led many clinical trials and Cochrane systematic reviews in the field of gynaecology and
fertility. In 2005 she established, with others, the New Zealand Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Committee, which has
driven policy changes in this area, and she was the inaugural Chair until 2013. She has been invited to present to the
American Society of Reproductive Medicine (2015), the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (2015) and
the Reproductive Medicine Network (NICHD, NIH) (2016). From 2014 to 2018 Professor Farquhar has been Co-chair of
Cochrane’s global Governing Board. In 2014 she became a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to
women’s health and received the 2018 Liley Medal from the Health Research Council of New Zealand for her research into
the fertility treatment intrauterine insemination.
Professor Robyn Longhurst’s highly original scholarship on gender, space and ‘the body’ has transformed the way that
human geographers and other social scientists understand people-place relationships since the mid 1990s. The concept of
embodiment is now seen as integral to feminist research, as well as to all research on space and place. Professor in
Geography and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic at the University of Waikato, she was elected Chair of the Gender and
Geography Commission of the International Geographical Union and was awarded the Distinguished New Zealand Geographer
Medal in recognition of her sustained intellectual and institutional contributions to international and New Zealand
feminist geography. She has consistently challenged the canons of mainstream geography and published five insightful
books that provided distinctive interventions in international research and scholarship and made visible the ways in
which knowledge is produced. In 2018 she received the award of Lauréat d’honneur from the International Geographical
Union for her contributions to gender, social and cultural geography.
Professor Stephen Robertson is a gifted clinician-scientist who has built an outstanding scientific track record in
studying the genetic determinants of congenital malformations, particularly in children. He is the Curekids Professor of
Paediatic Genetics at the University of Otago. He has a particular research interest in a group of disorders called the
filaminopathies, which are caused by mutations in a family of genes encoding for proteins called filamins. Somewhat
unexpectedly, it was found that a mutation in one of the filamin genes causes both disorders of brain development and
bone development. Insights gained from these disorders have filled gaps in understanding how bone develops in response
to chemical and mechanical forces, and in parallel how stem cells in the brain produce neurons that build the human
cerebral cortex. Professor Robertson publishes regularly in top scientific journals, is involved in leadership of
multiple national and international research consortia and related academic roles and is a passionate communicator about
the potential benefits of widespread genetic testing. He received the Liley Medal from the Health Research Council in
2010 for his research excellence.
Professor David Williams is recognised nationally and internationally for his originality of thinking in the areas of
constitutional law, colonial legal history and the Treaty of Waitangi. Holding a personal chair as a Professor of Law at
the University of Auckland, he has combined his expertise in history and law to produce ground-breaking studies which
have challenged previous conventional wisdom, recast the body of knowledge on Treaty of Waitangi jurisprudence, had a
direct influence on public and official understanding of Treaty issues, and influenced Waitangi Tribunal and Supreme
Court outcomes. Professor Williams enjoys strong links with scholars of law and Indigenous rights in colonial settings
internationally, and is sought after for international collaborations. In 2017, he was elected Honorary Fellow of the
American Society for Legal History – the first New Zealander to be so honoured.
Professor Charles McGhee is a corneal and cataract surgeon. As Maurice Paykel Professor of Ophthalmology and Head of
Department at University of Auckland, he has grown the ophthalmology group from five to more than sixty staff and
doctoral students, spanning clinical and laboratory eye research. He is also founding Director of the New Zealand
National Eye Centre, bringing together more than 120 ophthalmologists, optometrists and visual scientists in an
internationally-recognised centre. A clinician-scientist with interests in corneal diseases and transplantation,
Professor McGhee has published 315 peer-reviewed papers, three textbooks, supervised 71 fellows (29 doctoral), and
generated $21.5 million in personal research funding. He has been key to developing a new generation of New Zealand
ophthalmic clinicians and visual scientists and several streams of ophthalmic research. He is widely recognised
internationally in senior scientific and leadership roles.
Research by Professor Angus Hikairo Macfarlane (Te Arawa) has had a transformative impact on sociocultural theory and
research practice in the context of educational challenges experienced by Māori. His attention toward theorising issues
from within both Māori and Western epistemologies has empowered Māori and non-Māori to frame research questions and
select methodologies and data-gathering procedures that “make sense” to Māori whānau and educators and enable Māori to
define the criteria for successful research outcomes. Professor of Māori Research and Director of the Māori Research
Laboratory Te Rū Rangahau at the University of Canterbury, Professor Macfarlane’s deliberate bicultural approach to
research is best exemplified in his seminal models, the ‘Educultural Wheel’, used extensively in schools in New Zealand,
and his ‘He Awa Whiria’ framework that was adopted as a model of best practice by Superu for its research on whānau and
families.
Professor Merryn Tawhai is at the international fore of computational physiology of the respiratory system. Her work is
unique for its potential to address significant gaps in current clinical tools for diagnosis of lung disease and testing
interventional strategies before patient treatment. A Professor and Deputy Director of the Auckland Bioengineering
Institute and the University of Auckland and Director of the MedTech CoRE, the quality and potential impact of her work
has been recognised through being awarded the 2016 MacDiarmid Medal by Royal Society Te Apārangi and her international
reputation by election in 2018 as a Fellow of both the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and
International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering. She has also been appointed to key journal editorial
boards, and is the recipient of research funding from many sources.
Professor David Bryant is a world leader in the development of mathematical tools for inferring evolutionary
relationships among biological organisms. He has made significant theoretical and practical contributions to
phylogenetics — the field of biology studying the reconstruction of evolutionary history. A Professor in the Department
of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Otago, his research has been highly cited and applied to a diverse
range of different areas, including early bacterial evolution, plant ecology, rapid identification of pathogens and even
the origins of the "Little Red Ridinghood" fairy tale! His current projects range from population genetics to pure
mathematics to the development of agritech sensors. He was joint winner of the 2016 New Zealand Mathematics Society
Research Award.
HONORARY FELLOWS
Professor Thomas Higham is the Director of the world’s leading AMS radiocarbon dating laboratory at the University of
Oxford. An international archaeological scientist with New Zealand roots, his status was recognised recently by the
University of Waikato’s Distinguished Alumnus award. His continuing interest in pre-European New Zealand is seen in his
innovative dating of initial Polynesian colonisation, and his acclaimed lectures for the Allan Wilson Centre in 2016.
Professor Higham’s principal research focusses currently on the Eurasian expansion of Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH)
from Africa, a broad topic encompassing big archaeological questions. Of this, a 2012 edition of Nature commented that,
“by revamping radiocarbon dating, Tom Higham is painting a new picture of humans' arrival in Europe.” Professor Higham’s
many publications in top journals, and extensive citation of them, have secured his reputation as a scholar of
international eminence.
Professor Ichiro Kawachi is a world-leading epidemiologist studying the determinants of population health, helping to
develop the field of social epidemiology; including social capital and neighbourhood impacts; cardiovascular
epidemiology; and behavioural economics and public health. He has received many international awards and his
productivity and influence is outstanding, having published over 800 articles, reviews and book chapters and 11 books.
Since completing his medical degree and doctorate in New Zealand, he has had continuing contact with many former
colleagues, with whom he has maintained research collaborations, as well as hosting their graduate students at Harvard.
He has been an outstanding contributor to the University of Otago Wellington Summer School over a twenty-year period.
Professor Warrick Couch is a New Zealand citizen with a highly distinguished international reputation for his research
in astronomy and astrophysics, especially galaxy evolution and cosmology. He has made outstanding contributions to the
measurement of galaxy evolution and identification of the physical mechanisms that drive it. Based at Australia’s
Swinburne University of Technology, he initiated international efforts to detect supernovae at cosmological distances
(critical to the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for leaders of subsequent projects). He has served as Director of the
Australian Astronomical Observatory and President of the Australian Institute of Physics, and has won numerous awards,
including the 2007 Gruber Prize in Cosmology (jointly) for discovery of the accelerating universe, the Breakthrough
Science Prize in Fundamental Physics for 2015 (jointly), and the Astronomical Society of Australia’s 2017 Ellery
Lectureship for outstanding contributions in astronomy.
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