There are some familiar names as well as some new faces among the winners of the 2020 Prime Minister's Science Prizes.

There are some familiar faces as well as some new names among the Prime Minister's Science Prize winners this year.

Two of the five prizes are awarded for efforts to better understand and communicate the Covid-19 pandemic.

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The five Prime Minister's Science Prizes are New Zealand's most valuable research awards. Awarded annually, they are worth nearly $1 million.

A real team effort

The team prize, worth half a million, has been awarded to a consortium of 24 researchers working together in the field of complexity science as part of Te Pūnaha Matatini, a Centre of Research Excellence.

In early 2020, director Shaun Hendy saw that there was a gap in providing the New Zealand Government with the data science it needed to make informed decisions about responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

He assembled a multi-disciplinary team that developed a series of new mathematical models and ran a multitude of different scenarios to inform the unique situation that New Zealand found itself in.

The team has done modelling work and analysis on a wide number of areas, including hospital capability, contagion rates and likely disease spread, virus genomic tracing, contact tracing, and vaccination.

The results of this work were translated for use by the government policymakers and front-line operators and helped inform the government's response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Among other actions, this led to the government's 'Go Hard and Go Early' mantra that resulted in stringent lockdowns - both the country-wide lockdown beginning in March 2020 and the tailored Auckland lockdown beginning in August 2020.

Hendy and University of Auckland colleague Siouxsie Wiles have both been active spokespeople on the subject of Covid-19.

Hendy says the team's work is not finished yet. He adds "we will be leaving our tools, making them open so they can be maintained in perpetuity, so next time we meet an infectious disease crisis they are there for people to use."

Technology a winner in Prime Minister's Science Teacher Prize

Sarah Washbrooke, from Remarkables Primary School in Queenstown, is the first technology winner of the Prime Minister's Science Teacher Prize.

She uses a hands-on approach to teaching technology which is so engaging that her students often remain unaware of the depth and range of learning they are doing…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details