News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Electric Plane Set to Deliver Mail Across NZ

Electric Plane Set to Deliver Mail Across NZ

Parcels and letters will soon be distributed by electric aircraft between regions of New Zealand as the sparsely populated country embarks on a “new age of propulsion” in its attempts to decarbonise its reliance…

Testing Low-Carbon Aircraft in Christchurch

Testing Low-Carbon Aircraft in Christchurch

Christchurch Airport is positioning itself as a prime candidate for testing and establishing a base for hydrogen aircraft, with New Zealand leading the potential to test Airbus’s low-carbon vision for hydrogen-powered aircraft due to…

Cogito’s Josh Feast Discusses Behaviour and AI

Cogito’s Josh Feast Discusses Behaviour and AI

New Zealander Josh Feast is the CEO and co-founder of Cogito, an enterprise that combines Emotion and Conversation AI into an innovative platform that provides real-time coaching and guidance to contact centre agents, gives…

Waikato’s Weka Software Making Predictive Waves

Waikato’s Weka Software Making Predictive Waves

Weka, the pioneering open-source machine learning software that emerged from the University of Waikato in the 1990s, has been making waves in the field of data analysis and predictive modeling, according to a post…

LanzaTech named in TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies

LanzaTech named in TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies

LanzaTech, the carbon recycling company co-founded in New Zealand in 2005 by Dr. Sean Simpson has been named to TIME magazine’s 100 Most Innovative Companies 2023. The Illinois-based company was noted by TIME for…

Jacinda Ardern Says There’s a Model to Govern AI

Jacinda Ardern Says There’s a Model to Govern AI

“There is no shortage of calls for AI guardrails – but no one seems able to tell us exactly how to build them,” former prime minister Jacinda Ardern writes in a opinion piece published…

Ian Witten: Waikato University Digital Pioneer (1947-2023)

Ian Witten: Waikato University Digital Pioneer (1947-2023)

Influential computer scientist and University of Waikato Emeritus Professor Ian Witten has died in Hamilton aged 76. An expert in computer software and digital technology, he helped establish the University’s international reputation in machine learning,…

Auckland Island’s Pesky Pigs Now Cash Cows

Auckland Island’s Pesky Pigs Now Cash Cows

Auckland Island was – and still is – home to pigs, initially introduced in the first half of the 19th century by European hunters and explorers, as well as a group of Indigenous New…

Microbiologist Tanu Gupta Wins Basil Jarvis Prize

Microbiologist Tanu Gupta Wins Basil Jarvis Prize

Palmerston North AgResearch senior scientist Tanushree Gupta has received the Basil Jarvis Prize at the Applied Microbiology Awards, which was presented to her in London, AgResearch communications specialist Gred Ford writes in a story…

Revolutionary Gibbs Quadski Something Epic

Revolutionary Gibbs Quadski Something Epic

“As its name suggests,” the Gibbs Quadski “was an exciting mix” of a jet ski and a quad bike, Vlad Radu writes for car and automakers database, Autoevolution. It was “the first of its…

Richard Chandler Aims to Build Tesla of Aeroplanes

Richard Chandler Aims to Build Tesla of Aeroplanes

Futuristic electric vertical-takeoff air taxis have grabbed all the headlines – and billions in venture dollars – but Singapore-based investor New Zealand-born Richard Chandler, 63, thinks he has a better idea: conventional battery-powered aircraft…

Edinburgh Tech Jobs Boost with StretchSense Landing

Edinburgh Tech Jobs Boost with StretchSense Landing

New Zealand firm StretchSense, the brains behind “the world’s best motion capture glove”, is launching a “centre of excellence” in Edinburgh as part of a multi-million-pound global expansion of its capital operations. Scott Reid…

CEO James Parr Searching Universe for Signs of Life

CEO James Parr Searching Universe for Signs of Life

As a Lower Hutt schoolboy James Parr won a scholarship to NASA summer camp. Worried he wouldn’t fit in, he turned it down. Three decades later, he works alongside the space agency as chief executive…

Researchers Unlocking Renaissance Beauty Secrets

Researchers Unlocking Renaissance Beauty Secrets

Associate professor of art history at the University of Auckland Erin Griffey is a bit of a beauty maven. “I’m one of those people who reads the backs of beauty products,” she says. That’s…

Rocket Lab Grabs Booster With a Helicopter

Rocket Lab Grabs Booster With a Helicopter

Rocket Lab aims to join Elon Musk’s SpaceX in reusing rocket boosters, which can lower costs and increase the frequency of launching to orbit, Kenneth Chang writes for The New York Times. The small…

GAIT’s Saurav Bansal Using AI in Real-Time Carbon Measurement

GAIT’s Saurav Bansal Using AI in Real-Time Carbon Measurement

New start-up GAIT Global claims its technology, using artificial intelligence and spatial data, is the only real-time measure of carbon in the atmosphere and will help catalyse the world’s efforts in combating climate change….

Auckland AI at Forefront of New Virtual Workplaces

Auckland AI at Forefront of New Virtual Workplaces

Auckland-based AI developers UneeQ and Soul Machines’ “array of digital colleagues act as advisors and assistants, doing much of the heavy lifting of work in the metaverse and, in theory, free up human workers…

New Tech-Forward Platform ZQRX Pushes for Regenerative Wool Across New Zealand

New Tech-Forward Platform ZQRX Pushes for Regenerative Wool Across New Zealand

ZQRX, a collective focused on the sustainability of New Zealand wool, is building what it calls the first regenerative wool platform, Esha Chhabra reports for Forbes. About 460 farms which sit across 3.7 million acres…

Miruku About to Disrupt Global Dairy Industry

Miruku About to Disrupt Global Dairy Industry

Founded in 2020 by former New Zealand dairy executive Amos Palfreyman (pictured left) and Israeli food tech innovator Professor Oded Shoseyov, molecular farming startup Miruku, which has been operating in stealth until now, is…

Wayve’s Alex Kendall Teaching Cars to Drive

Wayve’s Alex Kendall Teaching Cars to Drive

UK autonomous driving start-up Wayve, co-founded by New Zealander Alex Kendall, has been backed by a host of big name investors including Microsoft, Virgin and Baillie Gifford in a US$200 million funding round that…

Space Man Peter Beck Makes Annual Bloomberg 50

Space Man Peter Beck Makes Annual Bloomberg 50

“In high school a guidance counsellor told Peter Beck that a career building rockets was ‘absurdly unachievable’. And it did take the New Zealander a while to realise his teenage dream. For more than…

See-Level Harnesses the Power of VR for the Seasick

See-Level Harnesses the Power of VR for the Seasick

Christchurch-based start-up See-Level may have found a seasickness cure using virtual reality to provide relief for sufferers. Yachting World’s Will Bruton reports on the innovation. See-Level founder Dudley Jackson, originally from the Isle of…

Howick Partners with US Construction Company

Howick Partners with US Construction Company

Together with New Zealand-based steel framing machinery designer and manufacturer Howick, Massachusetts company Windover Construction are renovating a century-old YMCA building in the US city of Beverly. By way of an Autodesk programme, Windover…

Oceanographer Kerry Black Helps Save India’s Beaches

Oceanographer Kerry Black Helps Save India’s Beaches

Puducherry in India is a seaside city of nearly one million people. This 40km strip of coastline, divided into seven zones, used to be home to some of the country’s most beautiful beaches. But…

New Zealand Signs Space Agreement with NASA

New Zealand Signs Space Agreement with NASA

New Zealand has announced it is the latest country to sign a space agreement with NASA, just as the country’s nascent space industry begins to take off, Associated Press correspondent Nick Perry reports. New Zealand became…

Allbirds and Adidas Make Planet-First Running Shoe

Allbirds and Adidas Make Planet-First Running Shoe

“Competition between running shoe brands is never-ending. Successful products don’t just boost profit margins, they help win medals, too,” tech reviewer Kieran Alger reports for Wired. “This new, shared – and frankly formidable –…

Largest Glowing Shark Species Discovered Near NZ

Largest Glowing Shark Species Discovered Near NZ

During a month-long expedition in waters off the coast of New Zealand, researchers identified the largest glow-in-the-dark species with a spine – on land or sea – that has ever been found, the kitefin…

Ancient Ngawha Kauri Witness to Great Change

Ancient Ngawha Kauri Witness to Great Change

About 42,000 years ago, Earth was beset with oddness. Its magnetic field collapsed. Ice sheets surged across North America, Australasia and the Andes. Wind belts shifted across the Pacific and Southern Oceans. Prolonged drought…

Rocket Lab Welcomes Electron Back to Earth

Rocket Lab Welcomes Electron Back to Earth

In a major milestone, the New Zealand-based launch company Rocket Lab has successfully recovered an orbital-class rocket after parachuting it back to Earth from near-space – only the second company in history ever to…

Soul Machines’ AI Florence Helps Smokers Quit

Soul Machines’ AI Florence Helps Smokers Quit

With smokers at great risk of Covid-19 complications, Auckland-based Soul Machines, leaders in artificial general intelligence (AGI), and the World Health Organization (WHO) have developed Florence, an embodied AI who offers online counselling for…

Climate Change Graphics Made Simple by John Lang

Climate Change Graphics Made Simple by John Lang

New Zealander John Lang has just finished an unenviable task: taking a jargon-packed, number-heavy report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and turning it into a graphic the average person might read,…

Mint Innovation Saves Valuable Metal from E-Waste

Mint Innovation Saves Valuable Metal from E-Waste

Our “throwaway” culture often means consumers are guilty of getting rid of old devices as soon as new ones come to the market, a habit that can have a significant effect on waste streams…

Digital Human Creator Uneeq Shares Its Tricks

Digital Human Creator Uneeq Shares Its Tricks

Auckland start-up UneeQ, that counts Salesforce’s former head of AI Richard Socher as an investor, has a new tool that aims to make building virtual humans to answer questions as easy as creating a…

Search for Life on Venus Could Begin at Rocket Lab

Search for Life on Venus Could Begin at Rocket Lab

New Zealand-founded company Rocket Lab may be able to send a small spacecraft to probe the clouds of Venus long before NASA or other space agencies are able to do so, industry journalist Jonathan…

Maps Reveal New Details About Zealandia

Maps Reveal New Details About Zealandia

New Zealand’s research institute GNS Science has published two maps revealing new research about the underwater continent Zealandia, where dinosaurs once roamed – and is allowing the public to virtually explore it on an…

Robotic Spot Put to Work Shepherding Flocks

Robotic Spot Put to Work Shepherding Flocks

A collaboration between New Zealand-based cloud-based software platform Rocos and American robotics company Boston Dynamics, has been heralded as the future of farming, Luke Andrews reports for the Daily Mail. The two companies have developed…

AI and Bias Removal a Herculean Task

AI and Bias Removal a Herculean Task

“Google’s algorithm for detecting hate speech tended to punish tweets written by African Americans, classifying 46 per cent of non-offensive messages as hate language, even if they were not, according to a report by…

Wayve Genius Alex Kendall Makes Forbes 30 Under 30

Wayve Genius Alex Kendall Makes Forbes 30 Under 30

New Zealander Alex Kendall, 27, who went to the University of Cambridge to pursue a PhD in Computer Vision and Robotics, and today serves as the CTO (and co-founder) of London-based Wayve, an AI…

How Our Space Industry is Causing Turbulence

How Our Space Industry is Causing Turbulence

Life on the Mahia Peninsula used to be quiet: surfing beaches, historical monuments, and good snapper fishing, Eleanor Ainge Roy writes for The Guardian. Then space came to town. Four years ago, Rocket Lab’s Peter…

Physicist Stephen Parke Makes Maths Discovery

Physicist Stephen Parke Makes Maths Discovery

Three physicists, including one New Zealander, wanted to calculate how neutrinos change. They ended up discovering an unexpected relationship between some of the most ubiquitous objects in maths, Natalie Wolchover reports for online publication,…

Four NZ Tech Superstars Bound to Become Global

Four NZ Tech Superstars Bound to Become Global

New Zealand is a country that immediately brings to mind a number of images upon its mention, London-based music and culture magazine The 405 reports. Jaw-dropping nature, a beacon of stability and commonsense governance…

Otago Scientists Explain Loch Ness Mystery

Otago Scientists Explain Loch Ness Mystery

The most famous photo of the Loch Ness monster has long been discredited as a hoax, but University of Otago scientists have come up with a new explanation for other sightings of the elusive…

Rocket Lab Aims to Catch Boosters with Choppers

Rocket Lab Aims to Catch Boosters with Choppers

New Zealand-founded California-based Rocket Lab wants to use a helicopter to “catch” the first stage of its Electron rocket as it floats toward the ground with a parachute, according to Robert Mogg reporting for…

Statistician Hadley Wickham Wins Global Award

Statistician Hadley Wickham Wins Global Award

Hadley Wickham, a statistician from Hamilton who is now based in Houston, Texas, has won the international 2019 COPSS Presidents’ Award. The prize is awarded annually to a statistician under 40 in recognition of…

New Zealand Study Looks At Robot Racism

New Zealand Study Looks At Robot Racism

The reason for shades of technological white in the creation of robots may be racism, according to new research undertaken by the Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand (HIT Lab NZ) and published…

Barbara Rae-Venter’s Revolutionary Cold Case Crime Breakthrough

Barbara Rae-Venter’s Revolutionary Cold Case Crime Breakthrough

Auckland-born genetic genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter has become the go-to expert for law enforcement agencies hoping to crack the cases that defy traditional investigative methods, according to a profile in the San Francisco Chronicle by…

On the Anniversary of Ernest Rutherford’s Find

On the Anniversary of Ernest Rutherford’s Find

“In 1907, a New Zealander named Ernest Rutherford moved from McGill University in Canada to the University of Manchester. There, he conducted a series of experiments where he fired alpha particles at different materials,”…

Pioneering Facial Reconstruction Work Of Harold Gillies Carries Graphic Warning

Pioneering Facial Reconstruction Work Of Harold Gillies Carries Graphic Warning

The pioneering work of Dunedin-born surgeon Dr Harold Gillies is graphically displayed in a Daily Mail spread featuring the facial reconstructions of soldiers wounded in WWI. Under the headline “The rebuilt faces of war:…

Rocket Lab Now Building Customisable Satellites

Rocket Lab Now Building Customisable Satellites

Small satellite launcher, New Zealand-founded Rocket Lab is getting into the business of making satellites in addition to launching them. The company has announced that it is offering a new service to customers: a…

Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck at TED in Vancouver

Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck at TED in Vancouver

Peter Beck is a space entrepreneur with a rocket and launch pad in New Zealand that has permission for flights “every 72 hours for the next 30 years”. Beck recently spoke at the TED…

Air NZ Uses 3D Printing to Install Spare Part

Air NZ Uses 3D Printing to Install Spare Part

“Air New Zealand’s exploration of 3D technology for parts and tools has ratcheted up a notch after it successfully ordered a 3D bumper protector for seats from Singapore and had it made and installed…

Your Apples May Soon Be Picked By Laser-Shooting Robots

Your Apples May Soon Be Picked By Laser-Shooting Robots

Roboticists are creating crop-specific machines to harvest fruits and veggies. One of these inventions is “the apple-picking robot, a metallic farmer that just graduated from R&D and won a job in a New Zealand…

40,000-Year-Old Log Explains Earth’s Mystery

40,000-Year-Old Log Explains Earth’s Mystery

A 40,000-year-old 60-tonne kauri log discovered during excavations for a new power station in Ngāwhā could explain a mysterious global event, which may have dramatically changed the Earth’s climate. Scientists in New Zealand believe the…

New Zealand Farmers Herd Sheep with Barking Drones

New Zealand Farmers Herd Sheep with Barking Drones

In New Zealand, farmers are using drones to herd and monitor livestock, assuming a job that highly intelligent dogs have held for more than a century, and though the robots have not replaced the…

Blockchain Tech Opportunites Abound for Aotearoa

Blockchain Tech Opportunites Abound for Aotearoa

A new report commissioned by New Zealand’s innovation agency, Callaghan Innovation, suggests the country is fertile ground for blockchain tech. The crown entity has published an opportunity report on blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT)…

24/7 Geohazards Monitoring Centre Debuts in NZ

24/7 Geohazards Monitoring Centre Debuts in NZ

A new centre providing enhanced monitoring of natural geological hazards manned 24 hours a day in New Zealand has officially opened in Lower Hutt. The National Geohazards Monitoring Centre is a purpose-built facility located on…