News Archive

An archive of the news items that have appeared on the AWC Home page in 2010.

Welcome to new AWC Principal Investigators

The Director of the AWC is pleased to announce that seven AWC Associate Investigators have been invited to become Principal Investigators in the AWC. They are David Bryant, Thomas Buckley, Alexei Drummond, Nigel French, Nicola Nelson, Charles Semple and Jon Waters.

The invitation followed a review of applications by the AWC Research Committee and is part of an ongoing process of development of the Investigator pool.  All the new Principal Investigators bring both strong research credentials and also a history of supporting the wider aspects of AWC work. Congratulations to all, and we look forward to their playing even larger roles in the work of the AWC in the future.

PhD student wins "Best Student Talk" Award

Beata fallerBeata Faller, a PhD student with Mike Steel and Charles Semple at the University of Canterbury, has won the best student talk award at the Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing (ACCMCC) held in Newcastle, Australia, 7-11 December, 2009. Beata was one of two winners from 22 entries. The title of the talk was "Maximum-weight k-cardinality arborescence in vertex-weighted digraphs, with an application in conservation biology".

The aims of the prize are to foster student interest and involvement in the ACCMCC conferences and to encourage good presentation of student talks.

Congratulations....

HamishSpencergo to AWC Investigator Hamish Spencer, he has just been elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. From the press release: "Professor Hamish Spencer of the University of Otago is a world renowned theoretical population geneticist best known for his work on genomic imprinting".

ThomasBuckleyAcademy chairperson Professor David Thorns said the high calibre of the nominees made the selection process challenging. “Being elected as a Fellow is an honour given to our top scientists for showing distinction in pure or applied research or in the advancement of science and technology".

Also congratulations to Thomas Buckley who has been awarded the New Zealand Association of Scientists Research Medal. This medal is given to a scientist under the age of 40 for outstanding fundamental or applied research.

New Zealand Science and Technology Award

Mike Hendy was awarded a 2008 New Zealand Science and Technology Award by the New Zealand government for his "mathematical approach to molecular ecology and evolution [that] has transformed these fields and led to the acceptance that evolution is testable – a massive step forward. His quantitative methodology now forms an integral part of the phylogenetic software packages used worldwide."

The award ceremony took place in Palmerston North last week. The award was bestowed on Mike by Dr Garth Carnaby, President of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Awards for 'Collapsing Creation'

BioEdThe Allan Wilson Centre is proud to be associated with "Collapsing Creation" a play that has won three awards. "Collapsing Creation" was commissioned by the AWC and had it's inaugural performance on 12 February 2009 at the BioEd 2009 Conference hosted by the AWC

The play, about the struggles and genius of Charles Darwin, scooped the Wellington playwright an awards trifecta.

Arthur Meek's Collapsing Creation picked up the Peter Harcourt award for outstanding new playwright of the year, at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in Wellington last night. It also won outstanding New Zealand play of the year, and the Chapman Tripp award for best production.

For more info read here.