First Director, Paul Callaghan’s piece - 2003

13 April, 2023

This newsletter is the first of a regular series of bulletins in which we will communicate the work of the MacDiarmid Institute to our friends and stakeholders. In this issue we report on just a few of our activities and as you read this you will gain a flavour of what we stand for. Yes, of course, we are about advanced materials and nanotechnology. But we are, in my view, about something much larger than that. Of all the CoREs, we are unusually committed to being a “distributed centre”, an oxymoron if you will, but an idea whose time has come. We stand for a sense of partnership in which the corporate ego of any one university will be secondary. Victoria, Canterbury, Otago or Massey universities can all feel proud of us.

But we are equally determined that we will draw on the strengths of our Crown Research Institute partners, Industrial Research Limited (IRL) and the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Limited (GNS). In turn, we want to impact on the way they see their future. In the end we need to build something new, crossing the boundaries of universities and CRIs to build a critical mass out of New Zealand’s fragmented and distributed talent. We are determined in that goal.

The first six months at the MacDiarmid Institute have been spent in hectic implementation, focused on ordering and installing the new research equipment that was made possible by the capital injection to the CoRE. With the operating funding, which has now started to flow, we have been able to establish new positions, prepare advertisements and select appointees. We have advertised for new Principal Investigators and Associate Investigators to join us, using the open and competitive process that we set out in our original plan. Two new PIs will join this year, funded at a rate of $40,000 per annum. We have also run regular video link- up seminars during these first six months, connecting researchers across the country and as far away as the United States. The Board met in Wellington in August, in an excellent atmosphere of cooperation, and will meet again in Christchurch in March 2003. The expertise which that Board brings to the Institute from the wider research and business community will be of enormous value to us. In February 2003, the International Advisory Board will be invited to comment on our productivity so far.

At the same time many of us have been involved in preparing for AMN-1, the major international conference in Wellington that, this February, will launch the Institute in a very public way. The presence of three Nobel laureates, most of our International Advisory Board, and a large number of other distinguished international speakers will give a prominence to New Zealand materials and nanotechnology research that has rarely been seen in the past. AMN-1 will be opened by the Governor- General Dame Silvia Cartwright and will feature a reception at the Grand Hall of Parliament officiated by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon. Helen Clark.

In a sense we are still catching our breath. As we look at our new equipment, and as we see new faces arriving and joining our effort, we can only feel a sense of optimism for the future. This is a rather unusual feeling in New Zealand research, but it is welcome and gives us renewed energy. At the same time the optimism is tempered by some harsh realities. First, the New Zealand university system within which our Institute operates is chronically under- funded, especially so in science and engineering. As a consequence we are trying to build world-class science and technology on an infrastructure so diminished that it is barely credible. It functions only because of the nearly superhuman efforts of some remarkably talented and committed people. Second, there is an almost complete disconnection between the agencies of government that deal with education and the agencies that deal with research, science and technology. Whatever the goals of our nation’s RS&T strategy, they will fail if they are not comprehended and incorporated by those who frame policies for tertiary and secondary education. The obstacles the Ministry of Education put in the way of our partnerships with the CRIs have caused us great difficulty, but they have not stopped us in our intent and we have overcome these, by the most creative means. Finally, we are all aware that we while can train the best re- searchers in the world, they may take their skills away from New Zealand.

While we may produce the best inventions, that intellectual property may yet end up being exploited by the rest of the world. How do we avoid that? We change the social and economic culture of New Zealand. It’s a task a bit big for the MacDiarmid Institute, but we will play our part. We are all in a race against time, a race that can only be won through partnership and understanding.

- Paul Callaghan, 2003