Top PhD students win scholarships

Six of the University of Otago's brightest doctoral students have gained Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarships to pursue their studies.

The prestigious scholarships recognise and reward excellent postgraduate New Zealand students and support research at PhD level in all disciplines, in New Zealand or overseas.

The recipients in the latest round were announced today.

The Otago winners are:
Christopher Burke (Gender Studies) for 'Literary Lives': Exploring the Lives and Texts of 'Pre-liberation' Homosexual New Zealand Men ($96,270)
Emily Crawford (Psychology) for Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? The Projective Value of Children's Drawings ($98,316)
Peter Green (Mathematics and Statistics) for Simulation Based Diagnostics Tests For Global Temperature Time Series ($98,402)
Hongjun Shi (University of Otago, Wellington) for Co-analysis of tumour protein expression and secretion; a method for serum biomarker discovery? ($98,316)
Stephanie Win (Microbiology and Immunology) for The Use of Virus-Like Particles (VLPs) as Vaccines and Immunotherapies for Cancer ($99,045)
Amy Wolff (Psychology) for Deficits in Contextual Representations in an Animal Model of Schizophrenia ($98,316)
University Graduate Research Services Director Dr Charles Tustin says he is thrilled that the students, who come from a range of disciplines, have won the scholarships.

"These prestigious scholarships are very competitive and I am delighted that six of the eight who were considered from Otago for this round were successful.

"This is a welcome recognition of their calibre as top research students and will open new opportunities for them," Dr Tustin says.

Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarships (TADS) are administered by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC).

Students who win the award receive $25,000 per year for up to three years, if they are studying in New Zealand, as well as up to $3,000 per year to cover the cost of attending conferences. They also receive tuition fees for three years.

The stated aims of the awards are to signal the value of high-level intellectual skills and their importance to New Zealand's future, to give doctoral scholars the choice of studying in New Zealand or at overseas universities, and to increase the supply of highly trained researchers and highly skilled graduates by supporting the top 10 per cent of doctoral candidates.