NZ’s Best Brains Bound for Britain

NZ’s Best Brains Bound for Britain

A novel approach to restoring sight for the blind, using numbers to help explain how words have evolved over time, and creating domino reactions in chemistry to make pharmaceuticals more affordable, will be researched by New Zealand’s top three university graduates heading to Britain next year.

Waikato’s Doron Hickey, Wellington’s Peter Clark and Ross Haines from Otago, were awarded a prestigious Woolf Fisher Scholarship this week, enabling him to commence studies at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

The scholarship recipients were short listed with seven others for the Woolf Fisher Scholarship programme, established eight years ago.

The Woolf Fisher Trust offers up to three scholarships each year tenable at the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford for three or four years of post graduate research leading to a doctoral degree.

The scholarships will be taken up in October 2011 and provide each recipient with full college and university fees and a living allowance. The annual value of each scholarship is close to $100,000.

The scholars were recommended by their universities and yesterday were selected, following interviews by the trustees of the Woolf Fisher Trust, for their outstanding academic and potential leadership abilities. They will possess many of the qualities admired by the late Sir Woolf Fisher, co-founder of Fisher and Paykel; integrity, kindness and generosity, leadership, boldness of vision and exceptional zeal, keenness and capacity for work.

The Trustees hope that the Woolf Fisher Scholars will make a commitment to New Zealand and that their careers will show a pattern of distinguished service to society that, directly or indirectly, will enhance the cultural level and moral strength of New Zealand.

Sir Noel Robinson, the Trust’s chairman, says this year’s shortlist reflects an outstanding calibre of scholars.

“The quality of our candidates is just so high now. All three students could become world leaders in their own right.

“For the first time, all three scholars have chosen to study at Oxford. If Doron, Peter and Ross follow in the footsteps of our previous recipients, Oxford’s supervisors will continue to embrace our students as they have told us the Kiwi recipients are punching way above their weight.”

Sir Noel says the challenge now, is to ensure the scholars will return to New Zealand after their studies.

“We just hope we see them back in New Zealand as their knowledge will be at the forefront of the world’s emerging technologies and discoveries. Our country has a responsibility to ensure our best brains can come back home,” he said.

The shortlist:

Doron Hickey has a medical degree from the University of Auckland and a Bachelor of Science Honours degree from the Australian National University. Next year, he will continue his education at Oxford, where he will join the Retina Gene Therapy Project to help restore vision to people living with inherited blindness. “Inherited blindness effects one in 4000 people worldwide, including about 1000 New Zealanders. My studies will hopefully lead to restoring vision for those born with inherited eye disease, and possibly one day help to treat people who live with age-related, macular and vision degeneration,” said Doron.

“Using the DNA of two different light sensitive proteins to create a hybrid protein will hopefully enable us to produce light sensitive cells. Once the DNA sequence is optimised, we will undertake clinical trials on people suffering inherited blindness.”

In his spare time, Doron volunteers with the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind. He has developed friendships with three members and Doron says one of them shares a mutual love of science, so he’s been downloading science podcasts for him to listen to. He has also enjoyed tandem bike riding with another of his friends.

The former Hillcrest High School student says: “I’m overwhelmed and humbled by the generosity of the Trust and hope that I can fulfil the hopes they have for me. It’s certainly not my own doing to get here and for that I’m grateful to the university’s lecturers and my teachers over the years.”

Doron is the son of scientists; his father holds a PhD and works for NIWA, and his mother, dux of Cambridge High School, is a research associate at AgResearch. The 25 year old enjoys endurance cycling, hockey, scuba diving, sailing and running.

Scientist Peter Clark is a 22 year old Victoria University graduate. The Titahi Bay will move to Oxford, where he intends to study the complex field of multi component domino reactions – combining three or more compounds in a single reaction, as opposed to the traditional two. This efficient process reduces chemical waste and in the long term, Peter hopes shorter syntheses will deliver more affordable pharmaceuticals for patients.

“As a kid, I was captivated by jigsaw puzzles and I think why I love chemistry so much is because like a jigsaw, I’m bringing pieces together to achieve a result.

“This field of chemistry is intellectually demanding as unlike traditional methods, I am working with more chemical compounds than usual, so there are more variables to be considered,” says the 22 year old.

The rugby player hopes his learning will one day help put New Zealand on the map as a centre of discovery and technology.

Ross Haines is a 21 year old Bachelor of Science graduate, with honours, from the Otago University. Ross was dux of Taieri High School and grew up in Mosgiel. In Oxford, Ross intends to study statistics to explain how the English language has evolved over time.

“I’ll be researching medieval manuscripts to calculate where they are from and when they were written. By looking for patterns in their language, we can apply mathematical models to pinpoint the manuscript’s origins and their historical context.

“In the long term I want to gain knowledge to keep tackling problems from as many different fields as possible. For this year’s research I applied statistics to sports by analysing the eye movements of soccer goalkeepers during penalty kicks, to understand what they look at to try to pull off a save,” said Ross.

The son of scientists, when he isn’t putting his mind to mathematical solutions, he is likely to be playing 1st XI hockey, cricket or a good game of squash.

www.woolffishertrust.co.nz

ENDS

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