Awards for the best and brightest of New Zealand science

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A University of Auckland team responsible for optimising life-saving treatment for oxygen-deprived infants has won the 2025 Prime Minister's Science Prize.

The awards were handed out in a ceremony in Wellington on Tuesday night.

The Fetal Physiology and Neuroscience group has been researching the effects of mild brain cooling for resuscitated newborns for over three decades.

The therapeutic cooling regime developed by this team is now the standard of care globally and has saved thousands of infants worldwide from death and disability.

The team included co-leaders Professor Alistair Gunn and Professor Laura Bennet, along with Associate Professor Joanne Davidson.

Sadly, Gunn died in May, before the prize was formally awarded, but after he had been notified.

In an interview with the Royal Society in March 2026 he said of the award: "Winning this Prize is a reflection of the last 30 years of work by us, by thousands of people around the world, and it's also a recognition of the trust that families placed in us at the very beginning, when we had no evidence that it was either efficacious or safe, and yet were willing to trust us to try."

For Bennet it's been a long journey of discovery, and an example of how 'experimental, blue-skies research' can result in unexpected positive outcomes.

The team will use the research money that comes with the prize to continue to investigate how hypothermia affects the brain, and to look into potential treatments for preterm babies with brain injury, for whom mild cooling is often not suitable.

What's the climate change factor in our extreme weather events?

The MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist prize was awarded to Dr Luke Harrington, a physical climate scientist at the University of Waikato.

Harrington leads the Climate Extremes and Societal Impact group, which focuses on quantifying the effects of climate change on the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events in New Zealand.

He says after an extreme weather event, journalists often ask him 'is this climate change?'. To which the answer is no, he says. "It's never only climate change. Of course, you have a whole sequence of ingredients which are completely natural, which need to come together... The question is how much worse or what additional change came along as a result of a warmer world."

Though it is difficult to do, the research of his group has been able to tease out these differences and put a number on it. Harrington told Our Changing World that he hopes this work will be used by decision-makers to prepare for the future.

"With every tenth of a degree of warming, we know that these things are getting worse and the direction of travel looks like this… And you can use a lot of that information to at least start to prepare adaptation measures."

Inspiring the next generation in design and technology

It was her time in Japan teaching English that Nan Walden-Moeung (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki) credits with both finding her love of teaching and the inspiration to embrace her Māori whakapapa.

A technology teacher at Wellington East Girls College, 'Whaea Nan' has been awarded the Prime Minister's Science Teacher Prize.

She uses Mātauranga Māori values as the overarching framework for her education approach, she says. "Taking the values of whanaungatanga, manakatanga, kaitiakitanga, and using them to inform my practice, especially for my students. How to take care of them first, how to believe in them, how they can believe in themselves, and then from there how we can use their identity, who they are, to then create something that reinforces that."

Using her fashion industry training and career background, Walden-Moeung combines traditional and contemporary approaches to korowai-making to provide choice for students - whether that's harvesting and preparing harakeke, or using a sewing machine, or even 3D printing.

Four years ago, she developed a showcase and competition, Kohara2Shine, for students to display their design and technology work.

Walden-Moeung told Our Changing World that after two decades of teaching, the best part of her job is helping a student get to a place of confidence in their own abilities.

"You come across a girl who is a little bit downtrodden, and a little bit down on herself... And you teach them how to use a sewing machine, and you show them how to stitch some feathers, and you make a korowai with them, and they display it at Kohara2Shine. And they're like, oh, actually, I'm da bomb. I'm real cool. And I got this."

A 'critic and conscience' approach to science communication

Early family fossil-hunting road trips are what Associate Professor Nic Rawlence credits with driving both his interest in paleoecology and science communication.

The head of the paleogenetics group at the University of Otago, which researches the prehistoric ecology of New Zealand, Associate Professor Rawlence has been awarded the Prime Minister's Science Communication Prize.

He speaks often about his lab's research and findings, and what they mean, but he also believes it's important to contribute his scientific knowledge to relevant conversations, to help inform debate.

"It's very much, where are the gaps in the scientific commentary or the science news media where I think I could make a difference having that critic and conscience role? Being able to provide real time critical commentary to dispel misinformation and provide that information for the public to make free prior and informed decisions about whether they sign on to things."

Recently, Associate Professor Rawlence has been adding his voice and expertise to the topic of moa de-extinction, following the July 2025 announcement by Colossal Biosciences.

He will use the prize money that comes with the award to learn more about the best methods of science communication to use with different groups of people, to pay for workshops for his students to upskill in communication, and to write a popular science book.

A better backseat driver app

Jesse Rumball-Smith has a busy time ahead. Just two days after accepting the Prime Minister's Future Scientist Prize he'll be heading off to begin his undergraduate studies at Harvard University.

He's not sure yet what he'll end up studying, but he imagines it will be "Something STEM-y. Science to help people".

Having come runner-up in the Future Scientist Prize last year, Rumball-Smith had two projects shortlisted this year. The research that won him the award is an app aimed at closing the socio-economic gap in New Zealand's road death toll.

While newer cars are dripping with safety features, those of us still driving our older vehicles are statistically more likely to be in an accident. This fact led Rumball-Smith to his research question, "How can I use the supercomputer that's in everybody's pocket, their smartphone, to bridge this divide?"

Dubbed 'a better backseat driver', the app uses the phone's front and back cameras to monitor the road and driver's face and then communicate back to the driver.

The project has taken three years so far and one year was spent on understanding behavioural psychology, says Rumball-Smith, to figure out the best messaging so that the user doesn't just mute the phone. "So things like, 'Hey, you're only going to arrive home three seconds quicker. Why don't we just slow down? Your risk of crashing is two times higher'. And the phone will actually speak those messages out and it will know the ideal time and the ideal kind of framing for those messages."

While he'll be taking a break on its development as he settles into his studies, Rumball-Smith hopes the app can be finalised in the future and can help reduce New Zealand's road toll.

A new prize

Reflecting the government's focus on research translation and commercialisation, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced a new awards category for 2026 at the ceremony.

The Prime Minister's Innovation Prize will recognise success in translating scientific knowledge into real-world products or services to benefit New Zealand.

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