AUT-SKA project highly commended at NZ Innovation Awards
AUT’s role in the world’s biggest science project won a highly commended prize at the NZ Innovation Awards.
AUT leads New Zealand’s role in the Square Kilometre Array project which will see e thousands of dishes across Australia and South Africa acting as two giant radio telescopes.
The telescopes, which will be fully operating by 2030, will help to create data images allowing scientists for the first time to see back to the beginning of the universe.
AUT and its partners are helping to design the correlator which houses the high speed computers. It’s the brain of the operation and makes all the data appear as though it is coming from just one telescope- making it easier for scientists to find things of note. AUT is using its radio telescopes at Warkworth to help model the SKA’s demands.
The project won highly commended in the Research Excellence category at the Innovation Awards in October.
AUT Colab Master of Creative Technologies Alejandro Davila, was also a finalist in the Young New Zealand Innovator category. Davila created the first story-telling virtual reality (VR) experience, Green Fairy, in the Southern Hemisphere.
Te Ipukarea’s Te Aka Dictionary & Te Reo Māori app & Tamata Toiere e-repository of waiata and haka, which AUT staff worked on, was also nominated for the Innovation in Media, Mobile and Entertainment category.
Last year, AUT Professor of Biotech Innovation and Kode Biotech CEO Steve Henry was named Supreme NZ Innovator 2015 and winner of the Innovation in Health and Science category.