Our Successes
As well as producing high calibre photonic and quantum scientists, Te Whai Ao — Dodd-Walls Centre has supported three high-profile university spin-out companies from the Photon Factory at the University of Auckland. These include sperm-sorting technology company, Engender Technologies; point-of-care diagnostics platform, Orbis Technologies and skin cancer screening company Luminoma.
Grant Successes
Every year our investigators apply for grants to continue their ground-breaking research. They have a tradition of success in garnering funding. Below is a list of some of our grant recipients in 2024.
Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi Fellow.
Elected Fellow - Professor and Governance Board member Frank Bloomfield
MBIE Endeavour
Te Whai Ao — Dodd-Walls Centre, in partnership with the University of Auckland, has been successful in two funding applications for the Endeavour round in 2024.
A novel medical device for delivering therapies to the ear.
Principal Investigator/s: Peter Thorne together with Cushla McGoverin and Frederique Vanholsbeeck. Contract value (GST excl): $8,296,275.00 over 5 years.
Google Academic Research Award
Principal Investigator, Associate Professor Harald Schwefel of the University of Otago has received $50kUSD from Google’s newly created (2024) Academic Research Award programme to further his work in quantum technologies and computing.
Marsden Fund 2024 Success
Researchers have won five substantial Marsden Fund grants.
A project by Research Fellow Nicholas Lambert and Associate Professors Jevon Longdell and Harald Schwefel, from the University of Otago has received $941k over three years to study exceptional control of quantum states: non-Hermitan physics and magnon-polaritons near exceptional points.
A second $941k grant over three years has been awarded to Professor Niels Kjærgaard, Dr Matthew Chilcott and Dr Susi Otto to study modifying the transmission of light through quantum-controlled light scattering.
Florian Sedlmeir has been awarded $360k over three years for his project exploring classical and quantum spectroscopy: visible/UV frequency combs at work.
University of Auckland Research Fellow Ray Xu and Associate Professor Miro Erkintalo have been awarded $936k over three years to explore nonlinear phase-locking for ultrashort light generation.
In Wellington, Dr Joe Schuyt of Victoria University’s Paihau - Robinson Research Institute’s optical sensing team has received a Fast Start grant of $360k to continue his work in developing an efficient photonic analogue of an electronic memory resistor that will allow ultra-fast, energy-efficient optical computing.
The Dodd-Walls Centre research focus is photonics, the generation, transmission, and manipulation of light, and the study of matter and energy at the quantum level.