Faculty of Engineering

Dr. Pram Abhayawardhana’s research is strongly focused on exploring innovative ideas in design, development and testing of formulated products with improved technical attributes while developing solutions to some of the foremost challenges related to environmental and human well-being.
She believes the interdisciplinary approach plays an important role in creating sustainable, effective, safe and long-lasting products. Pram is interested in developing extraction methods and conducting tests to identify potentially useful material from natural resources. She investigates methods to convert abundant resources with low commercial value into high quality ingredients or products. Her other key areas of interest involves scientifically exploring potential benefits of natural bioactives used in evidence-based complementary and alternative medicinal systems for the prevention and treatment of human diseases. Her interests also include efficacy studies of personal care formulations, application of encapsulation technology, studying in vitro activity of biologically active compounds and release behaviour of encapsulated formulations. Dr. Abhawardhana's  latest research interests focus on the scientific study of consciousness, mindful awareness, and human mental processes. She is particularly interested in understanding how different states of the human mind influence cognition, emotion, behaviour, physiology, and subjective experience. Her latest work explores the intersection of consciousness science, contemplative science, psychology, neuroscience, and physiology, bringing insights from contemplative traditions into dialogue with contemporary scientific approaches while fostering opportunities for collaborative research across disciplines.

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.

I am a social research scientist specialising in consumer behaviour, particularly technology adoption and market needs for bio-based products. I have extensive research experience, particularly in the uptake and perceptions of new technology, and in optimising value from the forest sector value chain.