University of Otago, Wellington
Events hub
Session 1: Healthy Aotearoa : Bold ideas for a better future
Speakers
Professor Chris Jackson
Chris Jackson is Professor of Oncology at the University of Otago, Dunedin, and a medical oncologist at Dunedin Hospital and Mercy Cancer Care. He treats patients with gut cancers and melanoma, teaches medical students and specialists-in-training, and is heavily involved in both national and international cancer policy and research.
He was previously the medical director of the Cancer Society of NZ, and his advocacy led to the funding of new cancer drugs, to the development of a new national cancer plan, and to the birth of the national cancer agency Te Aho o Te Kahu. He currently chairs the agency’s clinical committee and serves on the advisory board. In addition, he is on the programme board of the International Cancer Benchmarking Project, and is a founding member of the Common Sense Oncology movement.
He is a leading researcher in clinical trials in cancer, working with academics and companies to test and develop new treatments, and works alongside University lab groups to develop new tests for early detection of cancer and cancer recurrence, as well as methods for monitoring the growth of cancer and its response to treatment. He works with international groups on comparing clinical cancer outcomes between countries to identify how we can share information and learn from different cancer care systems to bring the best back to New Zealand.
Dr Megan Leask
Dr Megan Leask (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe) is a Pūkeka (Lecturer) in the Department of Physiology at the University of Otago. Her research focuses on the genetics of complex diseases, with particular expertise in gout, chronic kidney disease, and serum urate regulation. She is also internationally recognised for her work in Indigenous genomics, with a strong commitment to addressing the underrepresentation of Māori and Pacific peoples in genetic research.
Dr Leask uses bioinformatics, zebrafish and cell-based assays to explore the function of non-coding genetic variants, aiming to identify clinically relevant genetic factors unique to Māori and Pacific populations. Her long-term goal is to reduce health disparities by advancing precision medicine tailored to these communities.
Professor Jemma Geoghegan
Professor Jemma Geoghegan is a Professor, Rutherford Discovery Fellow and Robert Webster Chair at the University of Otago in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. She is an evolutionary virologist with a strong research focus on emerging infectious disease.
Her research focuses on determining the fundamental patterns and processes of viral evolution, ecology and emergence. Jemma's research involves using metagenomics to reveal the diversity, structure and evolution of the virosphere; examining the evolution of major viral infections; and developing new analytical approaches to analyse aspects of virus evolution.
She has received multiple national grants, including from the Health Research Council of New Zealand and the Marsden Fund, and her work has been featured in international outlets such as ScienceDaily and New Scientist. Through her Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, Dr Leask is leading a groundbreaking ‘omics project’ to drive equitable, genomically informed healthcare for Māori and Pacific peoples—while mentoring the next generation of Indigenous genomics researchers
Panellists
Joseph Tyro
Joseph Tyro (Ngāi Tahu, Te Ati Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Rangi) was raised in Ohinehou Lyttelton, close to his Papatipu marae Te Hapū o Ngāti Wheke. Joseph is a registered social worker and for the past 30 years has worked in social services, social work, and health sector in clinical, management and executive leadership roles. He holds a national role as Principal Advisor for Health New Zealand, Adjunct Social Work Lecturer for Open Polytech, Kaihautu Māori for Hohepa Canterbury and runs a small consultancy company. Joseph has Masters’ qualifications from the University of Canterbury and Auckland Institute of Technology and is a member of New Zealand Institute of Directors. Joseph serves on a number of hapū, local, regional, national and international governance boards. He is a proud recipient of many community, health, leadership and governance awards. Joseph is driven by the hopes and dreams of his grandparents and is passionate about advancing the aspirations of tangata whenua Māori.
John Robson
John Robson is the Managing Director of cell therapy company, BioOra Limited. BioOra was formed from a partnership with the Malaghan Institute to commercialise CAR T-Cell immunotherapy in New Zealand.
John Robson holds an executive position within the Bridgewest Group, a San Diego based privately held investment company that focuses on disrupting industries through innovation, and he is a Board Director of a number of their investment companies. He has over 30 years of investment experience across global markets, and he has been intimately involved in the start-up community in New Zealand since 2008. John regularly writes and speaks about technology in a number of forums and is an avid futurist.
In addition to his executive roles, John has been active in the Not-for-Profit ecosystem in New Zealand for 20 years and was the Chair of the National Board of the Child Cancer Foundation for 4 years, and is currently a Board Member of the One Percent Collective Trust. He was awarded Life Membership of the Child Cancer Foundation in 2017 by the Governor-General of New Zealand, Her Excellency The Rt Hon Dame Patsy Reddy, for his services to Childhood Cancer.
Session 2: Sustainable Science : how can science help us live better and protect our resources?
Speakers
Associate Professor Htin Lin Aung
Associate Professor Htin Lin Aung is a Rutherford Discovery Fellow at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Associate Dean Pacific for the School of Biomedical Sciences and Co-Deputy Director of Otago Global Health Institute at the University of Otago. He is also a Councillor at the Royal Society Te Apārangi Council.
Associate Professor Aung leads a transdisciplinary research programme that integrates biomedical, public health and social science disciplines and translates research findings into tangible health benefits. He was named as one of 40 trailblazers under the age of 40 from South-East Asia who are driving positive change and creating impact in the region.
Dr Alana Alexander
Dr Alana Alexander uses genetics to learn how challenges of the past and present have impacted on species, and what the impact of threats might be in the future, focussing mostly on whales and dolphins.
As a Māori scientist (Te Hikutū: Ngāpuhi) Alana also maintains a strong interest in ensuring that her research can be used to support kaitiakitanga and rangatiratanga of iwi, hapū and papatipu rūnaka.
Dr Kimberley O'Sullivan
Kimberley’s research primarily explores the relationships between energy poverty, indoor temperature and thermal comfort (both winter cold and summer indoor overheating), energy efficiency of housing and buildings, and health and wellbeing.
Much of Kim’s current work is focussed on understanding experiences of energy poverty among different risk groups, and evaluating the health impacts and broad co-benefits of community-, iwi-, and government-led housing and energy hardship interventions.
Panellists
Rebecca Mills
Rebecca Mills is an award-winning leader with recognised expertise in sustainability, regenerative development and impact reporting. She is known for driving cross-sector change and brings 25 years of experience in delivering tangible outcomes for people, nature and climate.
Rebecca holds a MSc in Biosphere Science and has completed impact measurement training at Saïd Business School. She leads The Lever Room, Women in Climate Tech Australasia, is an Edmund Hillary Fellow, and has served on the boards of two of New Zealand’s National Science Challenges.
Session 3 : Emerging Enterprise: how can science, innovation, and technology drive commericial opportunities?
Speakers
Professor Anthony Butler
Professor Anthony Butler is a highly reputed scientist in the CT imaging community. He is a radiologist with an interest in developing new imaging technologies. In 2007 he was one of the founders of MARS Bioimaging Ltd, a company formed to commercialise spectral imaging technology. He remains on the board and is Chief Medical Officer, a company with more than $10m of international sales revenue.
Anthony has more than 150 scientific publication (H-index >30). He has supervised more than 40 PhD students. He has won more than 10 awards for his research including awards from the Royal Society of NZ and the Royal Australian College of Radiologists. He is the lead investigator on over $12m of NZ government research grants, and co-investigator on more than $30m of other grants.
At Te Whatu Ora, he works as a clinical radiologist with an interest in both Emergency and O&G radiology. At the University of Otago, he is Director of Imaging within the Department of Pathology. As a CERN Alumni he continues to collaborate with the Medipix3, Medipix4, and CMS groups.
Dr Emma Wade
Dr Emma Wade completed her undergraduate degree in genetics from the University of York, in 2010. As part of her degree she spent time in a rare-disease genetics lab in Edinburgh.
After graduating, she worked for two years at the University of Manchester on eye disease genetics, before relocating to Dunedin, NZ in 2013 to undertake a PhD in rare, skeletal disorders with Prof. Stephen Robertson at the University of Otago. She ‘post-doc-ed’ in the Laboratory for Genomic medicine, working on the molecular mechanisms of rare, connective tissue disorders, until recently when she was awarded the Sir Charles Hercus Fellowship to support her work on rare genetic contributors to common connective tissue disorders, focused mainly on pelvic organ prolapse. She has explored the commercialisation pathway of a novel biological therapeutic and has received awards from KiwiNet and Medicines NZ to pursue these ideas.
Now based in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health at the University of Otago, Emma is focused on what rare disorders can teach us about common disease and how discoveries in the rare space can lead to novel treatments for diseases of aging, especially for women.
Debbie Hay
Professor Debbie has a BSc(Hons) in pharmacology from Sheffield University and PhD from Imperial College London. She is a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society (FBPhS) and a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi (FRSNZ).
Research in the Hay laboratory focuses on the molecular pharmacology of receptors which are therapeutic targets for migraine, diabetes/obesity and cardiovascular disease. Debbie works closely with the pharmaceutical industry and recently founded Solros Therapeutics Ltd. She is an advocate for improving patient care for those living with migraine in New Zealand.
Panellists
Peter Bernhardt
Peter Bernhardt is a strategy and governance practitioner with experience working in, and with, boards and leadership teams across the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors to achieve better outcomes. He is currently an Associate Director in Deloitte’s Strategy & Business Design team alongside serving on the board of Melanoma New Zealand and Genetics Otago Advisory Board.
Pete previously worked at the University of Otago as strategy advisor to Professor Helen Nicholson and is passionate about amplifying the impact of research through commercialisation. As an example, he has recently been working with a US-based biotech university spin-out to develop their strategy in support of their capital raise.
Sam Wilkins
Sam Wilkins completed his post-graduate research at Otago in the Microbiology and Immunology Department in 2015, before making the leap into commercialisation and technology investment where he has been embedded for 7+ years.
Prior to joining Otago innovation Sam was a Commercialisation Manager with Auckland UniServices, where he managed deployment of their deep-tech investment fund targeted at maximising impact and returns from research. In this role, Sam enjoyed building relationships with academics, entrepreneurs, and investors to drive innovative research towards societal impact.
Session 4: Southern Skies, Global Science: Health discoveries in space
Speakers
Dr Christoph Goebl
Dr Christoph Goebl is an internationally trained molecular scientist whose research spans structural biology, redox biochemistry, and cancer biology. With a foundational education in organic chemistry and a PhD in structural biology from the University of Graz (Austria), he has trained in some of the world’s leading research centres, including the National Institutes of Health (USA), the Technical University of Munich (Germany), and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto (Canada). This broad international experience laid the groundwork for his current research in Aotearoa New Zealand, where he focuses on understanding redox signalling and protein structure-function relationships in the context of cancer, cellular stress and aging.
Dr Goebl has published in leading international journals including Nature Communications, PNAS, Science Advances, and Angewandte Chemie. His research excellence has been recognised through major national and international funding, including several Royal Society Marsden Fund project grants, Health Research Council grants, and the Sir Charles Hercus Fellowship. As Principal Investigator, he has also led multi-institutional programmes to establish national research infrastructure, including the Southern Biomolecular NMR Centre and the Christchurch Drug Screening Facility.
He currently leads several research projects investigating the inactivation of a key tumour suppressor protein that drives cancer development and is strongly linked to the aging process. Dr Goebl also collaborates with several space agencies on extra-terrestrial research, studying how space radiation influences protein structure, tumorigenesis, and aging.
Dr Jim Loehr
Muscle function is known to decrease with spaceflight, aging, and various diseases. I began my career working at NASA developing countermeasures to spaceflight induced musculoskeletal deconditioning using physical exercise. That has led me explore, not only the practical application of exercise to prevent muscle dysfunction, but trying to understand the molecular mechanisms which may lead to that dysfunction.
Currently, I am working on projects evaluating the role of nutritional supplementation on improving muscle function, and the potential mechanisms influencing muscle dysfunction with aging and disease, specifically muscular dystrophy.
Dr Francesc March de Ribot MD, PhD
Dr Francesc March is a joint clinical, a productive academic at the Department of Medicine, Ōtepoti Dunedin, Otago University and an enthusiastic ophthalmologist at Te Whatu Ora.
He is a New Zealand and internationally trained eye surgeon with over 17 years of experience, specializing in retina surgery, glaucoma, and complex cataracts.
Dr March holds a Doctor of Medicine specializing in ophthalmology, a Master's, and a PhD in eye research. He has completed over three years of fellowship training in retina and additional fellowships in glaucoma and cataract surgery across New Zealand, Europe, and North America. His research interests focus on understanding the causes of vision loss and improving medical services to enhance clinical care. Dr. March has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and has participated as an investigator in international clinical studies. He frequently presents at national and international ophthalmology congresses.
Dr March is also involved in groundbreaking aerospace research, participating in parabolic flights with the European Space Agency. His team is the first to study dry eye in astronauts, which affects 30% of space travellers, proposing neurostimulation as a treatment. This research has gained international recognition, with several articles published and presentations at NASA, along with media coverage. He is an active member of Space NZ, the Health Research Network, and Otago University Business. He is working in new projects.
Panellists
Associate Professor Dr Sarah Kessans
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sarah Kessans is a visionary scientist establishing a groundbreaking microgravity biotechnology research Programme. As science leader of a $10M MBIE-funded initiative, she is spearheading the development of autonomous, high-throughput laboratory platforms for biological research in space, making advanced microgravity experiments more accessible than ever before.
Her work bridges aerospace engineering, microfluidics, and biotechnology, creating an entirely new research and commercial niche for New Zealand in the global space economy. Sarah’s leadership has already delivered flight-qualified protein crystallization payloads and brought together top national and international collaborators.