Professor Richard Blaikie

Governance Representative Board Member

June 2017 – June 2025

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise)

University of Otago

Biography

Professor Richard Blaikie, former Director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology and University of Otago’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise), is now Emeritus Professor, University of Otago.

After graduating with a first class honours degree in Physics from the University of Otago in 1988, Richard was a Rutherford Memorial Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where he received his PhD in Physics in 1992. He also spent a year as a visiting scientist at the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory. He returned to New Zealand to take up a position at the University of Canterbury in 1993.

Richard was the Deputy Director of the MacDiarmid Institute from 2002, before succeeding Sir Paul Callaghan as Director (2008 to 2011).

Internationally, he is perhaps best known for his scientific work on the negative refraction of light and its use in fabricating tiny electrical circuits.

As well as formerly sitting on the Marsden Fund Council, Richard was a foundation member of the Science Board established by the New Zealand Government. He was awarded the T K Sidey Medal by the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2001 and the Hector Medal in 2013, and was also a Fulbright Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. While Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Richard also held a Chair in Physics, which enabled him to continue to make strong contributions to MacDiarmid Institute research programmes.