Two senior research staff at the University of Otago, Christchurch, have been selected as the inaugural recipients of the James Smedley Trust Fellowship.
Associate Professor Marg Currie and Dr Christoph Goebl, both senior researchers in the Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science, will each receive funding to support their salaries and sustain the viability of their individual research portfolios for the next four years.
A $2.9m bequest to the campus from Canterbury farmer James Hobson Smedley was the largest gift received by the Otago Foundation Trust in 2023, with the Trust Deed requesting that the substantial funds be used for “medical research for specific purposes undertaken by graduates and undergraduates at the Christchurch Clinical School of Medicine at the University of Otago”.
University of Otago, Christchurch Dean and Head of Campus Professor Suzanne Pitama says Associate Professor Currie and Dr Goebl were chosen as the first recipients of the Fellowship by a panel of senior academics, overseen by a member of the campus Deanery.
Marg Currie
“The awarding of this Fellowship reflects the University’s recognition of Marg and Christoph’s outstanding contributions and leadership in several key areas, including their own research mahi and achievements, their collaborative partnerships with research colleagues, their supervision and capacity-building among students, and their advancement of both Māori and Pacifica health,” Suzanne says.
“Both are highly respected and experienced researchers in their fields and came with a strong endorsement from their HOD Professor Martin Kennedy as being key to the future infrastructure of the campuses research programme.”
Marg says it is an honour to receive the Fellowship.
“It is the first time in my working life that I have had such long-term stability,” she says.
“It will allow me to concentrate on building several exciting collaborative projects, such as the Cancer Prehabilitation & Rehabilitation Aotearoa collaborative which, together with groups in Auckland and Waikato, is working to establish personalised exercise as an important adjunct therapy during cancer care in Aotearoa.
“In addition, I am working with Tamara Glyn (Surgery) and colleagues from around the motu to build a repository of early onset colorectal cancer samples that will underpin national studies into this devastating disease. But, perhaps most important to me is that I will have more time to enjoy postgraduate supervision, which is vital to build research capability for our future,” Marg says.
Christoph Goebl
Christoph says the generous Fellowship will enable him to advance his team’s recent discovery of a novel mechanism linking oxidative stress to cancer tumour growth and translate their findings into improved cancer diagnostics.
“Not only will I also be able to expand our local research capacities to support other researchers, but alongside our team from the Mātai Hāora Centre for Redox Biology and Medicine and colleagues from the University of Canterbury, I will continue developing our drug screening facility and metabolite analysis centre,” he says.
“This initiative includes analysing native plants to extract potentially bioactive compounds, and I am very excited to explore bioactive compounds of Aotearoa's unique flora."
Born in 1918 in Waikato, James Smedley moved to Canterbury with his family as a young boy, farming the Bromley area from the 1950s, and the Marshlands Road area from the late 1980s. He died in 2016 aged 98. Along with the University of Otago, Christchurch, he also left substantial gifts to the Christchurch Botanic Gardens and the University of Canterbury’s Faculty of Fine Arts.
Suzanne says the full amount of the James Smedley bequest has been invested in the Otago Foundation Trust, to allow the funds to benefit UOC in perpetuity.
“To honour James Smedley and his vision to support research capacity, Development and Alumni Relations (DARO) has organised for the trust to establish the Fellowships for UOC so they can be managed to support the building of research infrastructure here on campus,” Professor Pitama says.
“His gift signposts the social accountability expected by the Christchurch community of our school. We are keen to exceed the expectations that Mr Smedley dreamed of as he considered this specific donation to us.”