Executive Team
Shaun Hendy
Director, Te Pūnaha Matatini
Shaun Hendy is Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini and Professor of Physics at the University of Auckland. His interest in the science of complexity stems from a conversation at a lunchtime journal club at Industrial Research Ltd about Geoffrey West’s work on the increase in the number of patents per capita with city size in the US. Hendy then downloaded an international patent database and found that the difference in patents per capita between Australia and New Zealand could be explained by the difference in population distributions. More about Shaun here.
Priscilla Wehi
Incoming Co-Director, Te Pūnaha Matatini
Priscilla (Cilla) is a conservation biologist and Rutherford Discovery Fellow at Manaaki Whenua / Landcare Research in Dunedin. Since completing a PhD in ecology and Māori at the University of Waikato, her research has focused on the links between culture and biodiversity, and ecological restoration. Cilla is passionate about inclusivity and diversity in science and is part of the 2018 Homeward Bound programme – the largest ever all-female Antarctic expedition that aims to raise awareness of the low representation of women working in Stemm. Cilla is also a member of the Predator-Free 2050 Bioethics Panel and the Kindness in Science Committee sponsored by Te Pūnaha Matatini. More about Priscilla here.
Murray Cox
Incoming Co-Director, Te Pūnaha Matatini
Murray Cox is Professor of Computational Biology at Massey University. Murray’s research group integrates new genetic technologies with sophisticated computational analysis to address biological questions at the interface of genomics, computer science and statistics. Currently an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Society in Germany, Murray was awarded the 2017 Te Rangi Hīroa medal by the Royal Society of New Zealand for his work advancing “historical approaches to societal transformation and change.” More about Murray here.
Alex James
Deputy Director, Industry and Stakeholder Engagement
With a PhD in combustion engineering, Associate Professor Alex James made the transition from catalytic converters to the rest of the world, where she uses mathematical modelling to solve problems. At heart she’s a mathematical modeller and works on problems from social science to climate change, but her main hobby is ecology. Although Alex says she is no ecologist – “friends had to teach me the difference between beetles and bugs” – she is excited by the contribution mathematics can make to the analysis and study of interactions among organisms and their environment. More about Alex here.
Dan Hikuroa
Co-Deputy Director, Public Engagement
Daniel (Dan) Hikuroa is an earth systems scientist at the University of Auckland who integrates mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and science to enhance the value of his research to the communities he works with. For his PhD, Dan led a British Antarctic Survey deep field geology mapping expedition, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship looking into how naturally occurring climate change affected the world’s oceans and biosphere in the distant past. Among his many projects in recent years, Dan was a co-author on the 2014 State of the Hauraki Gulf Environment Report. More about Dan here.
Siouxsie Wiles
Co-Deputy Director, Public Engagement
Siouxsie is an award-winning scientist who has made a career of manipulating microbes. She and her team make bacteria glow in the dark to understand how infectious microbes make us sick and to find new medicines. Siouxsie is also an enthusiastic tweeter, blogger, artist, curator and media science commentator and has won numerous prizes for her efforts, including the Prime Minister’s Science Media Communication Prize. In 2017, she published her first book, ‘Antibiotic resistance: the end of modern medicine?’, as part of the BWB Texts series. More about Siouxsie here.
Stephen Marsland
Theme Leader, Complexity, Risk, and Uncertainty
Stephen is Professor of Mathematics at Victoria University of Wellington. He was previously Professor of Scientific Computing at Massey University and has PhD from Manchester University and a degree from Oxford University. His research interests are in the applications of mathematics, especially differential geometry, to a wide variety of problems such as birdsong recognition, shape and medical image analysis, machine learning, and smart homes for the elderly. He also works in complexity science, including complex networks and agent-based models. More about Stephen here.
Michele Governale
Theme Co-Leader, Complex Economic and Social Systems
Michele Governale is an Associate Professor of Physics at Victoria University of Wellington. Prior to his arrival at Vic in 2009, Michele is a condensed matter theorist, with a particular interest in the theory of quantum transport in nanostructures. Studying the basic electronic properties of nanostructured systems has potential applications in the design of electronic devices of exceptionally minute dimensions (in the nanometres!) More about Michele here.
Uli Zuelicke
Theme Co-Leader, Complex Economic and Social Systems
Uli Zuelicke is a Professor of Physics at Victoria University of Wellington and a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Physics. With a background in theoretical condensed-matter physics, Uli’s research interests include mesoscopic and low-dimensional systems, spins in semiconductors, and complex materials such as graphene. He enjoys solving theoretical problems and collaborating with colleagues on experiments of mutual interest. More about Uli here.
Cate Macinnis-Ng
Theme Co-Leader, Complexity and the Biosphere
Cate is a Senior Lecturer in Ecology at the University of Auckland’s School of Biological Sciences and the President of the New Zealand Ecological Society. As an enthusiastic ‘tree ecophysiologist’, Cate’s current research focuses on plant responses to climatic conditions – in particular, the impact of drought on New Zealand’s native forests. Before moving to Auckland in 2010, Cate was based in Sydney, Australia, where she completed her undergraduate degree and PhD, and undertook postdoctoral research. Since then, she has received a host of awards – a Marsden Fast-Start grant in 2012 and a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship in 2015. More about Cate here.
Mike Plank
Theme Co-Leader, Complexity and the Biosphere
Mike’s research is in mathematical modelling, particularly in ecology and physiology. The motivation for this research comes from real-world problems and the emphasis is on qualitative mathematical models that capture the essential behaviour of a particular phenomenon. Mike has research interests in a variety of applications – ecology and exploitation of fish communities, collective cell behaviour, complex ecological networks, invasive species, epidemiology, animal movement, and neurovascular coupling. More about Mike here.
Julie Mugford
Chair, Te Pūnaha Matatini Whānau
Julie, a PhD student at the University of Canterbury, is researching and developing statistical tools to make better use of citizen science data. The main aims of her research are to measure the accuracy of users and to develop efficient ways to improve the overall accuracy of such data. Julie has a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics from the University of Canterbury. She is particularly interested in working with Te Pūnaha Matatini researchers with widely varying backgrounds and expertise to collectively solve problems in new and ground-breaking ways.
Kate Hannah
Executive Manager, Te Pūnaha Matatini
Kate Hannah has a Master of Arts (2004) from Waikato University in 19th Century American Literary Culture. Her principal research area is the historiography of the history of science, with a focus on the cultures and subcultures of science, gender in science history, and narrative and complexity. She holds dual roles at Te Pūnaha Matatini, a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence for complex systems and networks – executive manager and associate investigator; she is a research fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland, course convener of Science Scholars 101, and a Te Pūnaha Matatini-funded PhD candidate in the Science and Society Group at Victoria University Wellington, investigating novel hybrid methodologies for the historiography of science. Basically, she’s a historian in a Physics department. More about Kate here.
Kathryn Morgan
Research Operations Coordinator, Te Pūnaha Matatini
Kathryn coordinates Te Pūnaha Matatini’s day to day research operations and communications requirements, and provides critical support to the executive management team. After graduating with a Masters of Sciences in Physical Geography from the University of Auckland, Kathryn worked initially as a researcher at several organisations, and also spent 12 years in a variety of roles at the Auckland Museum. Later, she trained in secondary education and for a number of years was a high school teacher – highly translatable experience for when dealing with academics! More about Kathryn here.
Greg Town
Communications and Marketing Advisor, Te Pūnaha Matatini
Greg is supporting Te Pūnaha Matatini’s communications requirements as part of his role with the University of Auckland’s Science Faculty marketing team. Since graduating with a Science degree in Physiology from the University of Auckland, Greg has worked as a magazine and news editor, medical writer, health journalist, and technology blogger for a variety of publishing firms and marketing agencies based in New Zealand, Singapore and the UK. More about Greg here.