The New Zealand data science programme, Taiao, aims to help researchers make sense of environmental data so they can make useful predictions to guide good decisions. Claire Concannon meets the team at the University of Waikato where the programme is hosted. And a group in the Auckland Bioengineering Institute are researching a new needle-free jet injector design that they think might lead to a happier future for those with needle phobia.

Every minute satellites and sensors all around Aotearoa are pinging information to servers, taking all kinds of measurements - images, temperatures, water flows, weather conditions, you name it.

For environmental researchers these data hold the clues for what is coming next, but when there is so much information, how do you make sense of it all?

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The data science programme TAIAO aims to help with this.

Led by the University of Waikato, the TAIAO team is developing new machine learning methods able to deal with large quantities of environmental data.

Funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to the tune of $13 million over seven years, the programme is building an open-source online framework to allow researchers to share machine learning algorithms, tweaks and datasets.

It's a collaboration across the Universities of Waikato, Auckland and Canterbury as well as engineering company Beca and MetService.

Environmental scientists, such as Professor Karin Bryan, help connect data scientists and data engineers to interesting New Zealand specific datasets and problems to tackle.

Then data scientists, such as Dr. Nick Lim, create and optimise machine learning algorithms to make relevant predictions, and then make these available online for other environmental researchers to use and adjust as they need.

In this way the TAIAO team aim to promote a vibrant community of environmental researchers sharing information aimed at getting reliable answers or predictions that can guide good decision making.

Needle-free injection research

For hundreds of years a needle and syringe has remained the best way to deliver drugs and vaccines. But for the needle-phobic, is there hope for a future respite?

Dr. James McKeage is working on it. He's a post-doctoral researcher at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and wants to optimise drug delivery with a needle-free jet injector. The technology has been around for a while, based on spring loading or gas piston, but McKeage wants to perfect an electric motor driving model…

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