Graduate Students
David Acuna
- Supervisor:
- Marti Anderson
- Research Interests:
- Shark Ecology
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I use acoustic and satellite tags to
study shark movement dynamics, stable isotopes anlysis to document
foraging ecology, and baited remote stereo video cameras to understand
distribution and abundance patterns. I am also working in a social research
component that tries to understand public attitudes towards sharks -- information
used to design more effective educational campaigns aiming, to foster
support of shark conservation. I believe that this social component, usually
overlooked in shark conservation programs, is as necessary and important as our
ecology studies. I use the information provided by my ecology and sociology
research to evaluate the effectiveness of MPAs in shark conservation, and my
ultimate goal is to provide a model of sustainable coexistence between humans
and sharks.
Michael Barnett
- Supervisor:
- Paul Rainey
- Research Interests:
- Evolutionary Genetics
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Using experimental evolution and analytical genetics, I'm investigating properties of genetic
architecture (the mapping of genotype to phenotype) and how these might constrain or facilitate
adaptive outcomes in a bacterial model organism.
Antony Burrows
- Supervisor:
- Peter Schwerdtfeger & Elke Pahl
- Research Interests:
- Computational Quantum Chemistry
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Lattice Sums, Analytic Number Theory, Computational Quantum Chemistry,
QED/Renormalizations; CPU & Instruction Set Architecture, Floating Point Arithmetics, Hardware
Description Language & Synthesizable Logic, High Performance Computing
Yong Cao
- Supervisor:
- Gaven Martin
- Research Interests:
- Quasi-conformal Mappings
Elena Colombi
- Supervisor:
- Paul Rainey
- Research Interests:
- Bacterial Genomics
-
I am working on the kiwifruit bacterial canker disease caused by
Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae (Psa). Before 2008 the canker on
kiwifruit caused by Psa was register on the green kiwifruit in Japan,
China, Korea and Italy. At that stage the disease was sever, causing the
destruction the infected vines. The symptoms comprised red exudates,
leaf spots and canker. However the spread of these Psa strains remained
circumscribed. Unfortunately from 2008 an aggressive strain of Psa was
isolated for the first time in Italy on golden kiwifruits and it became pandemic.
Even if this strain shows the same symptoms of the older Japanese and Korean strains,
it is particularly virulent on the golden kiwifruit: when an orchard is infected the
best thing that a grower can do is to destroy all the vegetative material to prevent
the spread of the disease. The outbreak Psa strain arrived in the North Island of
New Zealand in 2010. While researchers were collecting samples from kiwifruit trees
another a low virulent strain that causes only leaf spots was discovered.
This strain was demonstrated to form a different clade from the other strains,
compatible with an old introduction in this country.
The big question is why this new strain is so virulent and causing so much damage?
I will be investigating the genome of the different strains of Psa to try to solve
some pieces of this puzzle.
Jayson Cosme
- Supervisor:
- Joachim Brand
- Research Interests:
- Quantum Physics
-
Thermalization in isolated quantum systems;
Nonequilibrium dynamics of few-body systems;
Hubbard-like models;
Stochastic phase-space methods.
Emelyne Cunnington
- Supervisor:
- Thomas Pfeiffer
- Research Interests:
- Yeast Evolution
-
My study focuses on the fitness advantage of the Crabtree-effect in yeast populations, from engineered to wild species.
In nature, the Crabtree effect allows certain species of yeasts to switch their metabolism between the respiration and
fermentation pathway. In an evolutionary point of view, this generates a metabolic trade-off between rate and yield of
ATP production. This trade-off is suspected to be relevant for social interactions between yeasts. In order to understand
the adaptation and evolution of different Crabtree (positive or negative) yeasts, my research my research will focus on
the effects of lab environments on the fitness of yeasts in mixed cultures.
Carlo Danieli
- Supervisor:
- Sergej Flach
- Research Interests:
- Condensed Matter Physics
-
Anderson Localisation and Metal-Insulator Transition in Quasiperiodic Lattices
Mohsen Hashemi
- Supervisor:
- Gaven Martin
- Research Interests:
Peter Jeszenszki
- Supervisor:
- Joachim Brand
- Research Interests:
- Quantum Physics & Chemistry
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Application of Quantum Monte Carlo method for cold atomic systems,
Methodological developments in multireference methods of quantum chemistry.
Yagmur Kati
- Supervisor:
- Sergej Flach
- Research Interests:
- Condensed Matter Physics
Annabel Morley
- Supervisor:
- Thomas Pfeiffer
- Research Interests:
- Yeast Evolution
-
Yeast can utilise respiration and fermentation as a method of ATP production,
exhibiting the so-called Crabtree effect. There is a significant difference
between the yield and the rate at which ATP is produced in these pathways;
and different yeast species vary in their use of these pathways.
For my PhD I am interested in understanding how these differences contribute
to Darwinian fitness of different yeast. I aim to use long-term evolution
experiments to investigate how the Crabtree effect could have evolved and
what overall benefit this gives to an individual.
Lizzy Myers
- Supervisor:
- Marti Anderson
- Research Interests:
- Ecology & Evolution
-
I am working on the deep sea fishes of New Zealand.
I am particularly interested in how functional alpha and beta diversity
changes with depth and latitude, revealing ecological patterns and evolutionary history.
We have data from stereo baited remote underwater video systems from the Kermadec islands
in the north to the subantarctic Auckland islands in the south, with depths ranging from 50 to 1200m.
Graeme O'Brien
- Supervisor:
- Gaven Martin
- Research Interests:
-
Yuriy Pichugin
- Supervisor:
- Paul Rainey
- Research Interests:
- Multicellular Evolution
-
I am interested in theoretical investigation of the origin of multicellularity.
Multicellular organisms evolved from the unicellular ones. There is a huge gap
between unicellular bacteria and the simplest multicellular organisms.
One of steps towards multicellularity is an emergence of cooperation between cells.
But the cooperation is not enough, it doesn't transforms a group of cells into a single
organism. There should be some other evolutionary steps passed on the way to that
transition. My research is focused on revealing these steps. My PhD project in Rainey
lab involves a modelling of the evolution of multicellularity.
This work is performed in a collaboration with another theoretician Eric Libby and
experimenters Katrin Hammerschmidt and Caroline Rose.
Sophie Shamailov
- Supervisor:
- Joachim Brand
- Research Interests:
- Quantum Physics
-
Exactly-solvable one-dimensional quantum systems, coordinate and algebraic Bethe Ansatz;
Non-linear wave excitations (such as solitons and vortices) in superfluid
ultra-cold gases in one dimension.
Odile Smits
- Supervisor:
- Peter Schwerdtfeger
- Research Interests:
- Quantum Chemistry
-
Phase Transitions under High Pressure;
Quantum Monte Carlo simulations.
Christina Straub
- Supervisor:
- Paul Rainey
- Research Interests:
- Bacterial Genomics
-
Along with Honour McCann and Elena Colombi, I am part of the Psa-Team
working on Pseudomonas syringae pv.actinidiae. Coming from a population
genetics background, it is not surprising that my first-year project
involves looking into the phylogenetic relations of Pseudomonas syringae
found on the surface of kiwifruit leaves in non-infected and diseased
orchards of the two main cultivars here in NZ: Hayward (Actinidia deliciosa,
green variety) and Hort16A (A. chinensis, the famous golden kiwifruit).
I am collecting my own leaf samples in kiwifruit orchards in Pukekohe, south
of Auckland and Kumeu (northwest). The processing of the samples includes
leaf washes, plating on KB and picking isolates that resemble P. syringae
on the plates, which are then sequenced on a set of four housekeeping genes.
The data from this study will give me the chance to get an overview of the
Pseudomonas syringae community found on kiwifruit leaves and to observe
variations between the different cultivars and Psainfected/non-infected orchards.
For future research, I have planned a more extensive community ecology approach
with identifying the bacterial epiphytic community found on single leaves by
sequencing the 16S rRNA gene. No attempt of determining the diversity of the
microbial community on kiwifruit leaves has been made so far, which would
give insight into the composition of bacteria present on the leaf, bring to
light any host specificity (A. chinensis is more severely affected than A. deliciosa)
and help understand any interaction of Psa with other bacteria in the initial and
vital stages of infection.
Lukas Trombach
- Supervisor:
- Peter Schwerdtfeger
- Research Interests:
- Quantum Chemistry
-
Computational chemistry;
Clusters and the Solid-State.
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