CARES Director, Professor Bruce MacDonald has been named the Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge’s Deputy Director.

He states that the Challenge, which involves the collaboration of over 100 researchers throughout universities and research institutes across the country, provides great opportunities for New Zealand’s future. “Our vision is to step up the engagement between researchers and industry for advanced technologies within the Challenge, and ideally spreading more widely”.

The Science for Technological Innovation, hosted by Callaghan Innovation, is a ten year, multimillion dollar investment to enhance New Zealand’s capacity to grow its economy through engineering and the sciences. It is one of 11 National Science Challenges supported by the MBIE to provide a stronger strategic approach to the nation’s investment in the sciences. Professor MacDonald suggests, “the exciting thing about the Challenge is that everything we are doing is new, including all our research and capacity development programmes, and even the way we are doing it as researchers”.

Taking on the role as Deputy Director does not stray far from his a long-term goal: to design intelligent robotic assistants to improve the quality of people’s lives, subsequently allowing science and technology to be central to our everyday routines. He adds, “one of the biggest challenges is getting our message out to all New Zealanders. We want people to be talking about what we are doing, how we are helping them, and suggest how they can be working with us”.