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The University of Canterbury’s multi disciplinary approach to research facilitates an entrepreneurial climate and fosters a wealth of innovative ideas
The University of Canterbury enjoys an international reputation for research excellence.
In both the 2004 and 2006 Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF) rounds conducted by the Government, UC's College of Engineering was ranked the number one engineering school in New Zealand. The University of Canterbury was also rated as one of the leading universities in New Zealand in the reports. The PBRF initiative is an independent assessment of research quality.
Canterbury ’s contribution to the 11-metre Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a $3.5 million high resolution spectrograph designed by the department of Physics and Astronomy.
Researchers at the University of Canterbury are fine-tuning a computer model of cerebral blood flow that could become a tool in predicting, treating and preventing strokes. Medical imaging techniques like MRI scans form the basis of such tools. Headed by Professor Tim David of the University's Centre for Bioengineering, the brain mapping team has developed a groundbreaking tool which takes into account what Professor David calls the “Goldilocks Effect”:
“This is the brain's ability to regulate its own blood flow, supplying brain cells with not too much blood and not too little; but an amount that's just right for proper functioning. In the fairy tale it's porridge, for us it's blood.”
The Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand (HIT Lab NZ) is a human-computer interface research centre hosted at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. The lab is a partner of the world-leading HIT Lab US based at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The HIT Lab NZ is revolutionising the way people interact with computers, by creating cutting-edge interfaces to:
The HIT Lab's multi-disciplinary approach to research and education facilitates an entrepreneurial climate, which fosters a wealth of innovative ideas. Currently the lab is working on a range of projects in collaboration with industry and academia.
One of the HIT Lab's key goals is to expedite economic development within New Zealand by transitioning breakthrough interface technologies to industry.
The HIT Lab NZ works in partnership with the Virtual Worlds Consortium which has links to Microsoft, Nike, Eastman Kodak, Chevron and Boeing
See also: HIT Lab NZ
For the second time in two years an academic visiting the University of Canterbury has been awarded a Nobel Prize.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced overnight that leading organic chemist and current Erskine Fellow, Professor Bob Grubbs, has been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
In October 2003 Emeritus Professor Clive Granger was visiting Canterbury when he received the phone call from Sweden telling him he was joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Professor Grubbs and this year's other two winners were cited specifically for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis. Professor Grubbs is visiting Canterbury University as an Erskine Fellow from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Of course, the University of Canterbury is no stranger to the prestigious Swedish awards. One its earliest graduates, Lord Ernest Rutherford won the Nobel Prize for his research on radioactivity.
Harnessing New Zealand’s world changing research by some of the globe’s most innovative thinkers
At the bequest of John Angus Erskine, a Canterbury College (forerunner of the university) graduate and peer of Ernest Rutherford, each year some 75 distinguished, international academic visitors from Faculties of Commerce, Engineering or Science are invited to the University of Canterbury for one to three months for the purpose of giving lectures in their areas of expertise. UC has become the global meeting place for top research professionals.
Last year UC welcomed seventy-five top academics from around the world as Erskine Fellows and sent over forty of its own research staff on Erskine sabbaticals.
Since its establishment in 1873, the University of Canterbury has had a long and proud history of producing graduates that change the world. Lord Ernest Rutherford studied at Canterbury College from 1890 to 1894 and began the research that would lead him to split the atom in 1917. Sir William Pickering attended Canterbury College in the 1930’s before immigrating to the United States. He headed NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory which propelled the USA to the fore of the Space Race in the 1960’s.
The commitment to world changing research continues: University of Canterbury student Matthew Keir, won the ICT and Creative Industries category prize at this year's MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards, ( New Zealand’s most prestigious science and technology awards).
A long and proud history of producing graduates that change the world.
Matthew's work focuses on the development of low-cost technologies capable of overlaying virtual images over what a person sees through their eyes – creating augmented reality. For surgeons, such technology would effectively give them X-ray vision.
Matthew was only one of several UC young researchers to be recognised at the MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards. For the second year in a row, the awards have been dominated by University of Canterbury students.
The previous year’s winner, Bioengineering PhD student, Andrew Rudge, was recognised for his groundbreaking work in patient agitation/sedation technology. MacDiarmid Award panel judges weren’t the only ones to recognise Andrew’s work: CNN announced it was one of the “50 technologies to watch over the next decade”. (CNN 29 September 2004 ).
University of Canterbury PhD students carrying out research with the MacDiarmid Institute of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, James Muys and David Melville have been short-listed out of seventy entries from around the world in an international nanotechnology business plan competition. Their idea involves developing a nanotechnology technique, called bioImprint, which may revolutionise the way in which biomedical and pharmaceutical industries detect diseases, diagnose cancer or test drugs. The bioImprint is a both a device and a process for replicating cell topography for analysis using high-resolution imaging tools such as the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM).