Faculty of Engineering

I am interested in how information-rich computational systems can better support human discovery and learning, particularly through tools that enable more interpretable and collaborative forms of understanding and communication. Focus areas include:

• Intelligent systems for environmental and social challenges
• GIScience and spatial data science
• Representation across machine learning models, natural language, and domain-specific data
• Dynamic and automated scientific workflow systems
• Decentralized knowledge systems

I am an Assistant Lecturer at the School of Earth and Environment of the University of Canterbury. I teach remote sensing for Earth observation and geospatial analysis using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and multispectral optical imagery. My research involves radar signal processing for Earth observation and biological applications and radar instrumentation.

I am a forest engineer and quantitative geneticist, fascinated by variability in natural and human-made forest ecosystems. I focus my efforts on characterizing and exploiting wood variability trends, in an effort to increase site productivity and forest value. I collaborate with domestication and breeding projects, including the New Zealand Radiata Pine Breeding Programme and Drylands Forest Initiative (durable eucalypts).

My personal website contains copies of all my publications. https://luis.apiolaza.net

Environmental lab technician at Civil Engineering

My work focuses on the transition to resilient, low-carbon renewable energy systems. I am interested in how electricity networks, transport, renewable energy, energy markets, community needs and public policy interact to shape New Zealand's energy future. My goal is to connect research, industry and government to accelerate practical energy transitions that deliver economic, environmental and social value.

 

I am the Director of the Electric Power Engineering Centre (EPECentre), where my role centers on translational engineering — taking rigorous academic research and scaling it into hardware, infrastructure, and commercial platforms that solve real-world resilience problems.

EPECentre is New Zealand's premiere research centre dedicated to studying electric power, electrification, renewable energy, and the energy transition.  The centre covers the techno-socio-economic spectrum, with a diversity of topics including;

• The electric power system
• Community energy
• Distributed energy systems
• Renewable energy, including wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy and hydro energy
• Systems design and integration
• Flexible energy services
• Energy storage
• Zero-carbon transportation system
• Energy policy

EPECentre is industry and community facing, being initiated at the request of the energy sector in 2002.  Much of our research is performed under commercial sensitivities and our outputs are non-indexed publications.

Dr. Christoph Bartneck is a professor in the department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury. He has a background in Industrial Design and Human-Computer Interaction, and his projects and studies have been published in leading journals, newspapers, and conferences. His interests lie in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Science and Technology Studies, and Visual Design. More specifically, he focuses on the effect of anthropomorphism on human-robot interaction. As a secondary research interest he works on projects in the area of sport technology and the critical review on scientific processes and policies. In the field of Design Christoph investigates the history of product design, tessellations and photography.

He has worked for several international organizations including the Technology Centre of Hannover (Germany), LEGO (Denmark), Eagle River Interactive (USA), Philips Research (Netherlands), ATR (Japan), and The Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands). Christoph is an associate editor of the International Journal of Social Robotics. Christoph is a member of the ACM SIGCHI, The New Zealand Association Of Scientists and Academic Freedom Aotearoa. The press regularly reports on his work, including the New Scientist, Scientific American, Popular Science, Wired, New York Times, The Times, BBC, Huffington Post, Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Economist.

My primary interest is in the wellbeing of those who work in the forest and logging industries. That encompasses not just the demand and resource determinants of wellbeing within those industries but also the way in which the various identities in operation within those fields are constructed and interact to create those determinant conditions. This leads to research projects that encompass worker health outcomes,  productivity studies for logging machinery,  operator skill development and the social practices constructed by the various discourses operating within a male dominated rurally centred industry like forestry.

Catherine Bishop is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Associate Investigator of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, and leads the Materials Cluster@UC. She leads both an MBIE Smart Idea and a Marsden research project.

She obtained a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and worked for Westinghouse, Ebara Solar and Johnson Matthey as part of her co-op degree. Dr Bishop earned a PhD in Materials Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where her research was part of a large NSF-EU jointly funded programme (NANOAM). She moved back to the UK for an MIT postdoc on collaborative research (INCEMS) with the Department of Materials, University of Oxford and other EU partners. She held a three-year Career Development Fellowship at the University of Oxford before joining UC in 2008.

Professor Bishop is a materials scientist who collaborates internationally and across many areas of materials research. Key current international partners are at Purdue, MIT, RPI and University of Stuttgart. Current transdisciplinary collaboration includes chemical engineers, physicists, chemists and microbiologists. Her research bridges structure-property-processing-performance interrelationships in alloys and ceramics.

She was an Academic Visitor at University of Oxford (2019) and a Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (2015). Dr Bishop was New Zealand partner member of HERALD EU-COST action (2015-2018), Chair of the first annual Materials@UC conference (2018) and has volunteered for MIT as an Educational Counsellor since 2015. She has convened symposia for ACerS at international conferences including MS&T 2020-present and is co-chair of the 2028 Solid State Studies in Ceramics Gordon Research Conference.