Centres of Research Excellence

The Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery is headed by Assoc. Professor Rod Dunbar. It brings together a cross-disciplinary group of leading academics from the faculties of Science, Engineering and Medical and Health Sciences. The research focus is on the new opportunities of the post-geonomic era, with integrated programmes in structural biology, proteomics, microbial genomics, drug development and biomodelling.

The actual research is a mix of leading-edge fundamental research, with strong possibilities for applications. Highlights include the structural analysis of key proteins involved in tuberculosis, the discovery of new virulence proteins from pathogenic bacteria, and the use of proteomics to find new therapeutic agents for diabetes.

Key academic staff

Professor Peter Hunter (Bioengineering) leads an ambitious international programme to model cellular behaviour. Professor Bill Denny (Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre) and Professor Garth Cooper (School of Biological Sciences) lead drug development programmes that have resulted in promising new drugs against cancer and diabetes and have resulted in new commercial enterprises. One compound, Laszarin, is currently undergoing Phase IIb clinical trials.

With its extensive national and international networks, the centre's goal is to be the engine room of New Zealand's future pharmaceutical industry.

More information is available at: www.mauricewilkinscentre.org

The New Zealand Institute of Mathematics and its Applications coordinates the efforts of leading researchers and students from The University of Auckland and throughout the country pursuing quality research in a range of mathematical science fields. It aims to provide a source of high-level expertise by creating and sustaining a critical mass of researchers in concentrations of excellence in mathematics and statistics and their applications.

The institute facilitates access to new developments internationally, and seeks to raise the level of knowledge and skills in the mathematical sciences in New Zealand.

NZIMA sponsors thematic programmes of research, which have focused on Cellular Modelling, Combinatorics, Dynamical Systems, Geometry, Logic and Computation, Numerical Methods for Evolutionary Problems, and Phylogenetic Genomics.

Key academic staff

NZIMA's co-directors are Professor Marston Conder and Professor Vaughan Jones. Professor Conder is internationally recognised for his research in algebra, geometry and combinatorics, especially the application of combinatorial and computational group theory to the analysis and construction of discrete objects with maximum symmetry. Professor Jones, who is based at the University of California, Berkeley for most of each year, is world renowned for his work on von Neumann algebras and related aspects of mathematical physics, and for fundamental discoveries in knot theory which won him a Fields Medal (the mathematical equivalent of a Nobel Prize) in 1990.

More information is available at: www.nzima.auckland.ac.nz