A record breaking $66 million for Marsden Fund

Embargoed until midnight, Wednesday 7 October

A record breaking $66 million for Marsden Fund researchers

7 October 2009

The Marsden Fund Council has announced its largest investment ever of $66 million. The money will support 111 world-class research projects from New Zealand’s universities and Crown Research Institutes.

The new projects have been acknowledged by experts from around the world as, advancing research excellence in the sciences, engineering, maths and information sciences, social sciences and the humanities. Almost one third of the awards (36) are Marsden Fast-Starts, designed to support outstanding researchers early in their careers.

A recent $9.0 million budget boost from the Government and a decision to spend accumulated funds has enabled the Marsden Fund Council to increase its investment in New Zealand’s early career researchers, and fund the largest number of proposals ever in a single year. The Marsden Fund is administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Highlights from the 2009 funding round include projects that will give answers to the questions: “what happens before a volcano erupts?”; “how and when do children put emerging language skills and memory together?”; and “how has tangihanga practice changed through time?”. These research questions are only three of the hundreds addressed by the 111 projects funded this year.

Professor Peter Hunter, Chair of the Marsden Fund Council, was proud of the result saying, ‘The Fund will continue its outstanding performance with this new batch of proposals. The increased level of the Government’s investment in the discovery end of New Zealand’s research spectrum, enabling our best researchers to have the freedom to explore their own ideas, shows its importance.’

‘The increase in investment this year has meant that we were able to fund another 11 Fast-Start proposals and approximately nine more Standard proposals. The continued level of research excellence of the proposals funded is truly impressive.’ said Prof Hunter.

Applications to the Fund are extremely competitive. Of the 934 preliminary proposals received (675 Standard proposals and 259 Fast-Start proposals), 214 were asked to submit a full proposal with 109 ultimately being funded, giving a success rate of almost 12%. Most of the funded proposals are for three years. Two 2006 proposals were given extended funding of two more years, giving a total of 111 proposals approved for funding in 2009.

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