NZRise has added our voice to a joint industry submission to the Marsden Fund, to quote IITP’s press release “11 of the leading representative bodies from the tech sector have joined forces to raise serious concerns about apparent bias within New Zealand’s major Marsden research fund that has led to a significant under-investment in tech-related research over time.”
The Marsden Fund in summary from MBIE’s website:
The Marsden Fund is New Zealand’s premier fund for investigator-led research. It supports excellence in research across science and the humanities. The Marsden Fund Council, appointed by the Minister of Science and Innovation, recommends which proposals should be funded. The Royal Society of New Zealand provides executive support to the Fund.
An example demonstrating the extent of the Digital and Technology industries concerns include the 2015 Marsden Fund distributions, 92 grants totalling $53.6M, of those 3 grants were Computer Science related with value of $1.2M.
IITP have written a summary of industry concerns here.
You can read the full industry submission to the Marsden Fund here 2016 Marsden Review
Victoria MacLennan, Co-Chair, NZRise