Issue 33-Monday 25th May 2020
HeadSup
Tālofa lava!
It’s Samoan Language Week and the theme is: Tapena sou ōso mo lau malaga – prepare yourself for the gift of travels. What a great theme for Alert Level 2. Offices are opening up again (see the info below) and getting back to on-campus teaching in Semester 2 is increasingly likely, with a few caveats. Once the formal guidelines come through from John Morrow’s office we will send info out to all teaching staff via Ako Online. Currently things are promising but we need to be able to turn on a dime and provide a quality learning experience to those who will not be able to front up in person: in other words, we need to maintain remote learning capacity. I’m mindful of the workload involved and so are our Associate Deans and Dean, who are working to get a little more flexibility and clarity out of the DVC Academic. More on this soon.
Great news on the staffing front: Dr Georgia Piggot has accepted a lectureship in Environmental Management and will be joining us from mid-2021. Georgia currently is with the Stockholm Environment Institute, Seattle. She brings a wealth of experience in environmental social science and is at the forefront of shaping international climate policy.
The Alumni Relations and Development team have got a great project going: the 40 under 40 project. We have till the end of the week to get nominations in and it would be fantastic if we could do this. Please let me know if you have someone in mind.
If you are a staff member, please note that the date of the School Retreat has shifted to June 16 (9am – 4 pm, online, lots of breaks). This will be an opportunity to feed ideas into our annual planning round and to upskill in a couple of areas of your choice. The agenda is being finalised this week. I’m looking forward to seeing you all there.
Lastly, a reminder: If ever there’s a need to take all your leave entitlement it’s this year. Please find time to use it all up: your well-being depends on time away from the job and, if you go on holiday, you will be doing your bit to help others earn a buck. I’d like to remind all PIs on grants that your fixed-term staff accrue annual leave and this needs to be taken before contract-end. Any leave owed will come off the grant and if that is exhausted it will come of your RDA and RE accounts as available.
Manuia le aso
JR
Whakawhanaungatanga – communities
Samoan Language Week
Check out this link and try adding some new language to Zoom this week:
Tālofa lava: Hello (formal)
Mālō le soifua: Hello/Good health
‘O ā mai ‘oe? How are you? (to one person only)
Manuia fa‘afetai: Good, thank you
Manuia le aso: Have a great day
Tōfā soifua: Good bye (formal)
ENV Staff Retreat Day 2020
The Staff Retreat Day will be held virtually on Tuesday 16 June. If you are unable to attend, please send your apology to Samantha (Samantha.huang@auckland.ac.nz ).
Preparations for the Staff Retreat
To all ENV staff: This is a call for your best 1-2 photos of a positive thing you did /experience you had in lockdown, and what you did to celebrate Level 2. Include captions if you wish, of up to 5 words per image.
These will be compiled into a ‘Licking Lockdown’ slide show for the School of Environment retreat on 16 June.
Deadline for submission to Kathy Campbell (ka.campbell@auckland.ac.nz) Monday 8 June.
Staff and Research Students – Return to Campus
Staff
Academic staff from the School of Environment have been approved (by JR) to return to their offices from the 28th May. If you require earlier access please email our Group Services Manager Michael Groom (m.groom@auckland.ac.nz )
Research Students
With the approval of your supervisor, you will be able to start returning to campus from the 2nd of June . Managers will need some time to ensure physical distancing and hygiene practices can be maintained in these office spaces, before allowing people to return. Because of this, it is preferred for students to wait until after the Queen’s Birthday weekend to come on campus.
Congratulations!
Catriona Thompson and co-authors have just been awarded the 2020 Michael Kirkby Award for best paper published in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms in 2019: Thompson, CF, Young, AP and Dickson, ME 2019 ‘Wave impacts on coastal cliffs: Do bigger waves drive greater ground motion?’ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/esp.4712.
This is the first paper from Catriona’s PhD, which she successfully defended in early May. Catriona completed a BSc in Geography at Auckland and Mark then hung an Honours project in front of her involving measuring wave impacts against sea cliffs. It turned out it needed a PhD not an Honours to do that project, and it’s exciting to see Catriona’s persistence on the topic recognised with this award. The President of the British Society for Geomorphology wrote that “It gives me great pleasure to be able to personally congratulate you on the award which recognises the importance of your paper which is an exemplary demonstration of the power of new geophysical methods, notably environmental seismology, for monitoring geomorphic processes.” Catriona now gets to wake up in the middle of the night to present the work at the 2020 Annual General Meeting of the BSG!
Call for nominations: 2020 40 under 40 – Alumni Relations & Development
Here are details regarding the 2020 40 Under 40 project from our Alumni Relations and Development team below. Nominations are now open and close on 1 June 2020.
A comprehensive list of potential awardees over the past four years has already been amassed by ARD (see here, you can filter by Science) but if there is anyone else you or your teams would like to nominate please complete the form here.
The 40 Under 40 project aims to shine a light on alumni aged 40 and under who have been making significant contributions to their local as well as global communities. They are selected on three criteria – professional success, community involvement and University engagement.
Please keep in mind the following when making nominations:
- We are particularly interested in those who are making contributions in two or more of the criteria areas – professional success, community involvement and University engagement
- The six categories are: Humanitarians, Performers, Influencers, Disruptors and Innovators, Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs
- We are looking for equitable representation across professions, interests, geographies, faculties, genders and ethnicities
- Nominees must be alumni and must be aged 40 and under as of 30 June 2020
- Nominees cannot be current UoA staff, current UoA students or current Members of Parliament
Future Voices Forum
There is an urgent need to plan Aotearoa New Zealand’s recovery post-COVID-19. New Zealand’s Government and Business Leaders are coming together to identify ways to put the recovery and our future on a more sustainable path. What needs to happen for New Zealand to be environmentally and economically successful?
We invite you to participate in the Future Voices Forum, a discussion on New Zealand’s future, opened by Her Excellency The Right Honourable Dame Patsy Reddy GNZM, QSO Governor-General of New Zealand.
The Future Voices Forum is an online event and discussion where you will learn about the system level challenges in creating New Zealand’s environmental and economic future and have the opportunity to ideate solutions and opportunities, assisted by a facilitator.
We will be reimagining and exploring New Zealand’s Food, Energy, and Transport systems. Imagine that there is to be $20 billion spent on solving problems in these areas. What solutions would you create?
This is a unique opportunity for you to help inform New Zealand Government and Business. They want the best and brightest to rip up orthodox ideas and challenge the establishment. They want your perspective on designing the future of New Zealand.
At this forum, you will get to:
- Think big – stretch yourself to create solutions to critical issues and impact our nation’s future
- Inform New Zealand Government and Business Leaders on what you want for New Zealand’s future. This is your chance to inform policy and strategy and influence CEOs including from Air New Zealand, Fonterra, and leaders from the Ministry of the Environment and more
- Connect with like-minded students and staff
Date: Thursday 4 June, 4pm-6pm
We look forward to seeing you there.
Ngā mihi,
Darsel Keane
Associate Director, Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Meetings, seminars and events
Volcanology, Geochemistry, & Petrology Research Group
The volcanology, geochemistry, & petrology research group’s final meeting will be on 26 May 2020 at 9 am on Zoom. Lena will be giving a talk titled “Subsoil alteration and degassing in the Rotokawa Geothermal Field, New Zealand” about her masters! As always, everyone is welcome to attend our meetings. Please contact me (Sophia Tsang: s.tsang@auckland.ac.nz) for the link if you don’t have a calendar invite. If you would like to take over my role in VPG next semester, please reach out! For more information, please see our website: vgp.blogs.auckland.ac.nz See you soon!
Calling all Modellers!
The School of Environment has taken an initiative to create a common platform for all Modellers in the University. Join our Slack group via this link.
Coastal Group Webinar
The next Coastal Group meeting/webinar will be held on Wednesday May 27th at 12:00 to 1:00 pm on zoom
News will be shared and short talks include:
- Boron isotope records from Pacific corals: Porites lutea under ocean acidification (Oliver Knebel)
- Coral calcification and the effects of the 20th Century warming ocean in the Central Pacific (Carlos Carvajal)
All welcome to attend – please email Emma Ryan at e.ryan@auckland.ac.nz for the Zoom link if you don’t have a calendar invite already.
Ako – Teaching and Learning
Pandemic, pedagogy and education 2: Teaching and learning remotely
Thursday 28th May 2-3pm
https://auckland.zoom.us/j/96123720863
The COVID-19 lockdown has posed considerable challenges and opportunities for educators. This zoom is designed showcase pedagogies, innovations and tools to assist and enrich remote learning within the Faculty of Science at the University of Auckland.
We will begin with three short presentations (approx. 10 minutes) followed by the opportunity for audience participation. Ideally this will spark a collective conversation that is ongoing, the second in an online series with future opportunities for staff to showcase pedagogical insights and innovations.
The presentations are as follows:
Title: Strategies for transferring first-year Chemistry experiments to Canvas
Presenters: Ruth Cink & Malini Arewgoda
Description: At its heart, chemistry is an experimental science. Remote learning certainly disrupts our normal structure for introducing students to the practical component of chemistry. We discuss our methods to re-create this essential part of our courses on Canvas and will share the pros and cons of these strategies.
Title: Getting on board the H5P train: Interactive question sets for online learning and engagement in biology education.
Presenter: Kathryn Jones
Description: Formative module question sets made with H5P were set up this year in BIOSCI 201 Cell and Molecular Biology. This talk will cover how anyone in the Faculty of Science can add H5P to their teaching toolkit, and how you can use it to keep students on-track with their learning.
Title: Fostering interactivity and students’ active learning in Zoom sessions
Presenter: JC Gaillard, Tutor Co-Contributors: Anthony Gampell, Martin Joe
This brief presentation will explore opportunities to retain class interactivity in teaching live sessions in a virtual and remote environment. Interactivity entails collaboration amongst students as well as between the lecturers and the students so that the latter actively contribute to their learning.
If you are unable to attend but would like to watch the session at a time which suits, please contact Mel Wall (m.wall@auckland.ac.nz) for access to the recording.
Tip of the fortnight
One of our ENV teaching team got some great feedback from a stage 1 student the other day and it’s worth a read:
Hey there, I’m just an average student going through his first year in uni, and I would just like to thank you for making my life so much easier. I found it very difficult to cope with online lectures which usually have video, audio issues and mainly are hard to understand. But after watching your section …, my life became so much easier. Your explanations are very easy to understand and I very much appreciate the fact that you address the explanation of words and meanings in your recordings. This makes my life so much easier and I would like to thank you very much.
What’s the tip? Define the jargon and keep the terms consistent.
Rangahau – Research
Research and Funding Opportunities
AINSE 2020 Residential Student Scholarships (RSS) – expressions of interest now open (submissions close 31 May 2020)
Residential Student Scholarships (RSSs) are offered by AINSE Limited (the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering) for suitably-qualified persons wishing to undertake studies aligned with ANSTO’s research programmes for a higher degree at an AINSE-member university. Expressions of interest will be received up to 11:59 pm AEST 31st May 2020.
AINSE RSSs are in the form of “supplements” and are offered to scholars who are, or will be, in receipt of an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) / Research Training Program (RTP) or equivalent award, and for as long as that Award is current subject to satisfactory progress.
The award provides a stipend of A$7,500 per annum, in addition to up to A$5,000 per annum travel and accommodation allowance (plus an additional accommodation allowance of up to A$5,200 for eligible students travelling from interstate or overseas), to enable students to spend a significant amount of time working at ANSTO facilities.
The RSS differs from a Postgraduate Research Award (PGRA) in that a RSS student must be onsite at an ANSTO facility (at Lucas Heights, Camperdown and/or Clayton) for an average of six months per year or more, which can be as a single block of time or as separate visitations.
Expressions of interest are now being sought from first-year PhD students whose research topics closely align with ANSTO’s research programmes: The Environment, Human Health, the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Defence and Space Industries, and Fusion. In addition, opportunities may also exist for postgraduate students interested in contracted research and industrial engagement projects in the defence industry area, and for postgraduate students interested in fusion research that aligns with ANSTO and ITER activities.
Applicants are requested to email a one page (A4) only* abstract to ainse@ainse.edu.au outlining the details of their research project and the ANSTO staff member(s) they will be collaborating with. Selected applicants who are successful in the first round will be invited to submit a more detailed online application.
The Terms & Conditions and an ANSTO Capabilities & Facilities Guide can be found on the AINSE website: www.ainse.edu.au. For enquires and further information, please contact the friendly staff at AINSE on ainse@ainse.edu.au | +61 2 9717 3376.
Facebook Research – Explorations of Trust in AR, VR and Smart Devices
Facebook is seeking research proposals for exploring unique challenges, threats, attacks, mitigations, and other considerations in the burgeoning space of AR, VR and smart devices.
Trust and trustworthiness are terms for encompassing security, privacy, integrity and ethics in the products and platforms.
Projects will be funded that help accelerate research in these fields with the hope of helping to foster a world of trustworthy mixed-reality and smart device products.
A broad range of topics relating to applications like AR glasses, VR headsets, other AR or VR form-factors, smart home products and more will be considered by the funder.
Value: $75,000 USD (Max) – award is an unrestricted gift meaning there are no budget restrictions.
Duration: No specified duration but awards generally last for 12-18 months.
Internal Deadline: June 5, 5pm
Full Guidance and call specifications can be found on this webpage.
The Royal Society Te Apārangi is now calling for applications for the following awards and opportunities:
The Sir Hugh Kawharu Masters Scholarship for Innovation in Science
The Sir Hugh Kawharu Scholarship for Innovation in Science, administered by Royal Society Te Aparangi, is a $10,000 scholarship for study at masters level in the sciences. The Scholarship is applicable across a broad range of science disciplines including the physical, mathematical and computational, earth, environment, marine, social, health, biological, biomedical, human, and behavioural sciences. The Call for Applications is now open with a closing date of 31 August 2020. Information about how to apply is available on the Society’s website.
Raewyn Good Study Award for Māori and Pasifika Social Science Research
The Raewyn Good Study Award for Māori and Pasifika Social Science Research is an award of $6,000 for a Māori and Pasifika postgraduate student undertaking a Master’s which involves social sciences research. The study award, tenable at any New Zealand university/wānanga for one year is available to students, who at the time of application, are engaged/enrolled in or applying for a Master’s degree which involves undertaking social sciences research. The Call for Applications is now open with a closing date of 31 August 2020. Information about how to apply is available on the Society’s website.
RHT Bates Postgraduate Scholarship
The RHT Bates Postgraduate Scholarship is a study award of $6,000 for a PhD in the Physical Sciences and Engineering in a New Zealand university. Preference will be given to those whose research aims to apply information/image processing to studies in medicine, the physical sciences, astronomy or engineering. The Call for Applications is now open with a closing date of 31 August 2020. Information about how to apply is available on the Society’s website.
Research in the Pacific – UniServices are interested in any potential research projects based in the Pacific. Please get in touch with Kathryn or Kelly to discuss more.
Master of Science (MSc) research scholarship
A one-year MSc (Geology) scholarship funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund is available at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. The successful applicant will conduct multi-disciplinary field mapping, microstructural analysis, and geochemical or geophysical investigations to investigate the role fluids play in repairing and restrengthening greywacke fault zones damaged by earthquakes. The research will be supervised by project lead Dr Carolyn Boulton in collaboration with Dr Catriona Menzies, Durham University (UK) and Dr Ludmila Adam, University of Auckland (NZ).
The scholarship provides a 12-month stipend of NZ$17,000 and payment of domestic tuition fees. Students who are not citizens of New Zealand or Australia are encouraged to apply, but will be required to pay international tuition fees unless alternative funding is available (please see https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/international).
To apply, or for further information, please send an email to Dr Carolyn Boulton (carolyn.boulton@vuw.ac.nz).
For for further reading please see here.
New publications
- COULSON, G. MOORES, J. WAA, A., KEARNS, R, WITTEN, K., BATSTONE, C., SOMERVELL, E., OLIVARES, G. and HOWDEN-CHAPMAN, P. (2020). Towards a framework for resilience assessments: working across cultures, disciplines and scales in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities 14 May 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2020.00011
- Costello, MJ. 2020. Taxonomy as the key to life. Megataxa 1, 105-113. https://doi.org/10.11646/megataxa.00.0.0 [this new journal was launched by Professor Zhi-Qiang Zhang of the School of Biological Sciences and Landcare]
- Zhao Q, Stephenson F, Lundquist C, Kaschner K, Jayathilake DRM, Costello MJ. 2020. Where Marine Protected Areas would best represent 30% of ocean biodiversity. Biological Conservation 244, 108536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108536
- Arfianti T., Costello MJ. 2020. Global biogeography of marine amphipod crustaceans: latitude, regionalization, and beta diversity. Marine Ecology Progress Series 638: 83–94.
- Chao A, Kubota Y, Zelený D, Chiu C-H, Li C-F, Kusumoto B, Yasuhara M, Thorn S, Wei C-L, Costello MJ, Colwell RK. 2020. Quantifying sample completeness and comparing diversities among assemblages. Ecological Research 35, 292–314.
- Kusumoto B, Costello MJ, Kubota Y, Shiono T, Wei C-L, Yasuhara M, Chao A. 2020. Global distribution of coral diversity: biodiversity knowledge gradients related to spatial resolution. Ecological Research 35, 315–326. DOI: 10.1111/1440-1703.12096.
- Pagès-Escolà M, Bock PE, Gordon DP, Wilson S, Linares C, Hereu B, Costello MJ (2020) Progress in the discovery of extant and fossil bryozoans. Marine Ecology Progress Series 635, 71-79.
- Zhao, Q., Basher Z., Costello MJ. 2020. Mapping near surface global marine ecosystems through cluster analysis of environmental data. Ecological Research 35 (2), 327-342.
- Thompson, CF, Young, AP and Dickson, ME 2019 ‘Wave impacts on coastal cliffs: Do bigger waves drive greater ground motion?’https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/esp.4712
- Le Dé, L., Gaillard, J.C., Gampell, A.V., Loodin, N. & Cadag, J. (2020). Participatory mapping 2.0: new ways for children’s participation in disaster risk reduction. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 35(2), 34-42.
- Gampell, A. V., Gaillard, J.C., Parsons, M. & Le Dé, L. (2020). Fostering student participation in disaster risk reduction through disaster video games. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 35(2), 43-50.
- Gampell, A. V., Gaillard, J.C., Parsons, M. & Le Dé, L. (2020). Exploring the use of the Quake Safe House video game to foster disaster and disaster risk reduction awareness in museum visitors. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 49, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101670
Copy deadline for next edition of P-cubed: Friday 5th June to Farnaz: f.sheikh@auckland.ac.nz
