New Zealands top researchers were recognized with prestigious awards at the 2011 Research Honours event in Wellington on November 16.

University of Otago biochemist Professor Christine Winterbourn became the first woman to be awarded the countries highest science honour, the Rutherford medal, for her discoveries in free radical biology.

Details about all of the awards and citations can be found here.

It concerns us greatly that the Department of Conservation is about to axe many important established science positions (both scientists and science support staff) in its Auckland, Nelson and Dunedin offices, in a move to help “better direct resources to its conservation work in the field”, as such changes were earlier justified.
- David Galloway and Sir Alan Mark

The Association of Women in Science have  just relesed their "2011 Snapshot of Women in Science". The statistics are pretty sobering, and I wondering what makes them so?  What are the fundamental underliers of these statistics?  Where I work in the Science Faculty there are 7 female professors, in my School alone there are 9 male professors.

Sometimes research really is about making the boat go faster. Team New Zealand trialled two of their new catamarans yesterday, small models of the real thing. The boats were built in Seaview, Wellington, and rely on some serious computational design effort to get them flying along. Many of the smaller boats are being built, so they can be raced and tested against each other while the design is honed. Peter Blake's question "will it make the boat go faster?"  is often asked about efforts to improve the economy. WIth real yachts, making them go faster needs research, development, and collaboration between people with a wide range of specialised skills. Just need to get the same approach across the economy ...