Associate Professor Dianne Sika-Paotonu from the University of Otago, Wellington – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, Pōneke has been awarded the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s Callaghan Medal for science communication, the first Pacific scientist to receive the honour.
The award recognises Associate Professor Sika-Paotonu’s evidence-based science communication and her engagement efforts in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific region.
Otago PhD graduate Dr Ehsan Arabahmadi won the Royal Society’s Hatherton Award for the best scientific paper by a student registered at a New Zealand university for a PhD in Physical Sciences, Earth Sciences, or Mathematical and Information Sciences.
The awards were presented at the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s Research Honours Aotearoa ceremony in Dunedin on Thursday, the first of three events to be held around the country.
Associate Professor Sika-Paotonu was described by the selection committee as an exceptional communicator, who focused on her areas of expertise, was highly empathetic and engaging and aware of the needs of her audience.
An immunology and biomedical scientist, Associate Professor Sika-Paotonu says she is humbled to be the 2024 recipient of the Callaghan Medal.
She sees the award as an acknowledgement of the importance of science communication in its broadest sense, a vital part of her role as an academic scientist.
“Science communication is really important across a number of different areas: it’s important in the public setting, the research setting, the teaching setting, and the community and cultural settings, such as the Pacific contexts across which I also operate.”
Associate Professor Sika-Paotonu won the 2022 Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize for her commitment to communication and for being a leading voice during the Covid-19 pandemic. She has given more than 220 broadcast media interviews and contributed to more than 1,500 online and print media stories.
As a New Zealander of Tongan descent, she was one of the few Pacific voices working alongside others and qualified to speak in detail on the pandemic.
Her research at Otago focuses on cancer, rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, and infectious diseases, with a focus on equity and addressing health inequities for disproportionately impacted and affected communities.
“Significant health inequities exist for many different groups, including for Pacific and Māori communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and in the Pacific region, with many of these disparities having continued and persisted over time.”
She says to help address these inequities in health and achieve better outcomes, it’s important for everyone, including health, scientific and medical workers and researchers to also connect and engage appropriately and constructively with those they encounter, including Māori and Pacific peoples and communities.
“The need to build a health and research workforce that is more representative of the communities we seek to serve is also essential. All can benefit from communication and engagement efforts that are respectful, inclusive and based on two-way dialogue.”
One of Associate Professor Sika-Paotonu’s key areas of work is focused on rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, which disproportionately affects Māori and Pacific peoples in Aotearoa and the Pacific region.
Acute rheumatic fever is the body’s autoimmune response to an untreated Group A Streptococcal (GAS) infection of the throat or skin. If severe enough, or if repeated episodes of acute rheumatic fever occur and are left untreated, this can lead to permanent heart damage, known as rheumatic heart disease. Painful monthly injections of penicillin must be given for a decade or more to prevent recurrence of the GAS infections that can trigger acute rheumatic fever and lead to the development of rheumatic heart disease.
Associate Professor Sika-Paotonu also leads work with collaborators that is contributing towards the development of longer lasting and less painful penicillin for rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease prevention – and is involving Pacific and Māori communities in the process.
“As part of this work, we’ve engaged with our communities and embarked upon what’s still actually considered a novel approach to drug design, because we’ve chosen to involve our communities – our Pacific, Māori and other communities – in the scientific work.
“Science communication should be respectful, appropriate, and involve two-way interactions, ultimately seeking to build relationships if researchers are wanting to progress work that is more inclusive, and involves input from our communities.
“Our research efforts have certainly been strengthened through meeting with our communities and coming together to share the research work that’s taking place, but also importantly, by listening to people telling us about what has been happening for them, what they think, and inviting them to be involved in any of the work that is being progressed.”
Associate Professor Sika-Paotonu was awarded the Cranwell Medal from the New Zealand Association of Scientists in 2020 and was a finalist in the Wellingtonian of the Year Awards in 2021. She was part of the team that won the 2023 Liley Medal from the Health Research Council of New Zealand and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to support her rheumatic fever research. She has received a Royal Order awarded by the late King George Tupou V of Tonga in recognition of scientific achievement.
Dr Arabahmadi received the Hatherton award for a paper from his PhD in computational physics, published as a Letter in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Research. The paper studied the phenomenon of Anderson localisation, named for the pioneering work of Philip Anderson who was recognised with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977.
His primary supervisor Physics Professor David Hutchinson said on a technical level, Dr Arabahmadi was one of the best students he’d had the privilege of supervising.
Dr Arabahmadi moved to Otago from Iran to complete his PhD and now works as an embedded systems engineer at Fisher and Paykel Appliances in Dunedin.
Otago Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson congratulated both recipients on their awards.
He says Associate Professor Sika-Paotonu’s ability to engage with a wide range of people about scientific research is testament to her respectful and inclusive approach to communication.
“Dianne is a true leader in her field. Her genuine commitment not just to share science with others, but to listen to others and learn from them is inspirational.”
