$60 million awarded to Marsden Fund researchers

$60 million awarded to Marsden Fund researchers

More than 100 research projects have shared $60 million of funding in this year’s Marsden Fund grants.

A record number of applications, 1089, were received from researchers at New Zealand universities and Crown Research Institutes.

The Marsden Fund is regarded as a hallmark of excellence, allowing New Zealand’s best researchers to explore their ideas. It supports projects in the sciences, technology, engineering and maths, social sciences and the humanities. The fund is administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand on behalf of the government.

Almost one-third of the awards this year (34) are Marsden Fast-Starts, designed to support outstanding researchers early in their careers.

Highlights from the 2010 funding round include projects that will give answers to the questions: “is the smell of our native birds contributing to their decline in numbers?”; “what kinds of entrepreneurial leadership are relevant for Maori as they receive financial and land-based assets through Treaty settlements?”; and “what physical conditions within the Earth’s mid-crust allow active continental faults to evolve and generate earthquakes?”.

These research questions are only three of the hundreds addressed by the 102 projects funded this year.

This year a new panel was formed to look at proposals in the engineering area with the view that successful projects will lead to possible new cross-disciplinary applications in science and engineering.

Marsden Fund Council chairman Professor Peter Hunter said it was encouraging to see such a high standard of proposals coming through in all areas.

“The Marsden Fund supports investigator-driven fundamental research, and plays an essential role in building a healthier, socially more cohesive and economically stronger nation.

“For example, in the biological sciences area, Marsden funded research feeds developments in medical science. Similarly, in the physical, biological and engineering sciences it helps to build a stronger economy by feeding the development pipeline.

“Research we fund in the social sciences and humanities helps maintain the social and intellectual health of our nation, to ensure we have a society worth living in.

“We are proud to announce these newly funded projects from the country’s top researchers. However, we are also very aware that there were many more extremely worthy projects that, with our limited resources, we were unable to fund.”

Applications to the Marsden Fund are extremely competitive. Of the 1089 preliminary proposals received, 252 were asked to submit a full proposal with 102 ultimately funded, giving a success rate of 9.5%. Most of the funded proposals are for three years.

ENDS

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