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Spring 2014
10
TAKEOUTS
Law students at the University of Waikato will
have the chance to work on real cases as part of
a new law internship programme – the first of its
kind in New Zealand – established between the
University’s Te Piringa - Faculty of Law, and the
Police Prosecution Service.
Third- and fourth-year law students who have
completed the third year Crimes paper are eligible
to undertake the internship programme which
runs during the University’s summer school period
(November to February).
Wayne Rumbles, Senior Lecturer at Te
Piringa - Faculty of Law, says the internship
provides students with the chance to work on
real police cases. “This programme is unique in
that it gives students real hands-on experience
with a prosecutor, following a case, including
spending time in court, and doing real work
and submissions.”
Students in the programme spend six weeks
working on a number of cases, under the guidance
of a mentor, in a town or city in the central North
Island or Northland.
They then spend another six weeks writing a
research paper following on from their case work.
The University of Waikato’s Te Piringa -
Faculty of Law is partnering with one of the
top US law schools to offer double masters
(LLM) degrees.
Waikato has negotiated a Memorandum of
Understanding with the James E Rogers College
of Law at the University of Arizona which will see
both institutions making available their respective
LLM programmes to students recommended by
the other partner.
“This is the first time in New Zealand history
that students can pursue a LLM here as well as
one overseas in any country, let alone a leading
law school in the USA,” says Professor Bradford
Morse, Dean of Law at Waikato.
Essentially, students studying in one
university will gain advanced standing or cross
credit a part of their first master’s qualification
to the other, enabling them to obtain both
LLM degrees in a shorter time with lower costs
than they would by enrolling in the two
degrees separately.
As New Zealand farms continue to face problems
associated with ongoing drought, University of
Waikato doctoral student Jack Pronger, originally
from Cambridge, hopes his current research
project will contribute to an improvement in
pastoral drought resilience. As the recipient of
the Flower Doctoral Fellowship in Agribusiness, a
scholarship worth $30,000 a year for three years,
Jack will look to address the ongoing impacts
of drought on dry land farming, or farms that
aren't irrigated.
The Flower Fellowship is awarded to a student
whose research has relevance in the agribusiness
sector, focusing particularly on issues of food
production, farmer ownership and labour issues,
New Zealand's role in global agriculture and the
preservation of fertile soils.
Jack’s research will focus on identifying
approaches to increase drought resilience by
using more diverse mixes of pasture species –
research that could have a significant impact on
farm production.
His PhD will look at differences in seasonal
water use between mixed sward pasture systems
(a combination of different grass, legume
and herb species) and ryegrass/clover pasture
systems under dairy grazing.
Flower agribusiness fellowship awarded
Learning with the cops
Teaming up withArizona
The biological heritage challenge
REVERSING the decline of New Zealand's biological heritage
is the mission for a new national research programme led by the
University of Waikato’s Professor Bruce Clarkson.
The New Zealand Biological Heritage Science Challenge
is one of 10 national Science Challenges funded by the
New Zealand government, designed to allow more strategic
science investment to deliver major and ongoing benefits for
New Zealand. Funding of $25.8 million is guaranteed for the first
five years.
Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering, Professor
Clarkson, is recognised as one of New Zealand’s foremost
authorities on ecological restoration and has been seconded
as a full-time interim director for New Zealand’s Biological
Heritage Science Challenge until December this year. The
secondment will see Professor Clarkson set up the framework for
the programme, while allowing time for the group to recruit a
permanent director.
“Hosted by Landcare Research, the research undertaken
in this challenge will be designed to protect and manage
New Zealand’s biodiversity, improve biosecurity and
enhance the country’s resilience to harmful organisms,” says
Professor Clarkson.
“This programme has the potential to be a game-changer
in terms of a fundamental shift in research thinking, alignment
and collaboration. The proposed research will require new ideas
to flourish and work at a much larger scale compared with now,”
he says.
In fact, Professor Clarkson describes the five-year
research programme as the biggest of its kind for this topic in
New Zealand to date. He hopes that the integrated ‘one ecosystem’
research agenda will synergise benefits, deepen collaboration
across research boundaries and most of all, increase the focus of
investment on the ‘mission critical’ research which works with and
for the community.
“The proposed national partnership, coupled with a high-
performing, integrated research agenda, will deliver fit-for-purpose,
socially acceptable, cost-effective and well-tested solutions to address
national priorities in both natural and production ecosystems.”
Professor Clarkson became involved in the project last year when
he was invited to work on the Biological Heritage Science Challenge
oversight group. The group’s first job was to put together a research
plan. He acted as co-ordinator for the plan involving seven Crown
Research Institutes and eight universities. He worked part-time
on the project for several months, culminating in the submission
of the proposal to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and
Employment at the end of April.
CHALLENGE LEADER: Professor Bruce Clarkson, expert in
ecological restoration.
DEALING with massive amounts of data
is one of the looming problems facing the
world’s research communities, a leading data
expert says.
Professor Bryan Lawrence (pictured) of
Reading University told the fifth eResearch
New Zealand Conference that the world
faces a “big and significant looming
data problem”.
About 120 delegates attended the
conference, held at the University of
Waikato, where Professor Lawrence was one
of three keynote speakers, along with Kaitlin
Thaney from Mozilla Science Lab and Dave
Turek from IBM.
Organising chairperson Dr Joseph Lane
from Waikato University says eResearch is
about using tools and technology to augment
traditional research practices.
“It spans all research areas,” he says.
The conference explored ways in
which researchers could use technology to
collaborate more effectively by developing
ways to share what are often very large
amounts of data. Education was also a key
focus of the conference – both in terms of
how existing researchers can develop the
necessary eResearch skills and how a new
generation of researchers learn them as a part
of their postgraduate studies.
Professor Lawrence, a leading researcher
into weather and climate computing, told
the conference the world is now producing
so much data, it’s creating significant
infrastructure implications. “Storage can’t
keep up. Enhanced computing produces
more data and we are now making more data
producing equipment than storage,” he says.
Professor Lawrence says it’s difficult to
see what the future holds but for researchers,
the need to share increasingly large amounts
of data raises serious questions. “This flood
of data has implications for computing, data
networks, software and people,” he says.
In his own networks, Professor Lawrence
predicted that in the next five years, he
would have between 30-300 petabytes of
data to share. “That’s not total data, just data
to be shared.” One petabyte is equal to 1024
terabytes while one terabyte equals 1024
gigabytes. Professor Lawrence predicted
any solutionwould be based on infrastructure
partnerships and more collaboration but
warned it was extremely difficult to predict
what will happen, even in the short term.
Dr Lane, from the Faculty of Science &
Engineering, says there was good feedback
from the conference.
“One of the comments I heard was
how good it was to see a broad range of
organisations represented or involved,
particularly government sectors that don't
normally attend academic conferences.
Organisations such as the Ministry of
Social Development, Ministry for the
Environment, Statistics New Zealand and
others actually have similar data problems to
researchers in universities and CRIs.”
Conference highlights data
flood
App shows the way at Fieldays
AN INNOVATIVE digital app designed to
provide mobile, location-based information
at events was one of many University of
Waikato innovations on show at this year’s
National Agricultural Fieldays at Mystery
Creek. The app, designed by Dr Annika Hinze
andAssociate Professor David Bainbridge from
the Faculty of Computing & Mathematical
Sciences, was put through its paces in the
Innovation section at Fieldays and allowed
users to learn more about featured displays.
The app runs on small tablets and was
used at Fieldays to provide key information
about other products and services on display
in the Innovation section by using a location-
based system which also provided text,
images and videos. The location information
was able to be accessed via augmented reality
or interactive maps, which could be connected
through GPS satellites, bluetooth beacons or
simple QR codes. Dr Hinze says the app is
adaptable to other event-based situations
or location-aware information and can also
include audio content and run on mobile
phones.Itwill alsobe able to switch to a photo-
viewer, providing 360-degree immersion into
featured content. Even location-based note-
taking and personalisation can be supported,
she says.
