By Jane Luscombe
A project that could lead to the real-life equivalent of Harry Potter's invisibility cloak has just been granted public funding.
It's one of 86 projects receiving millions of dollars in the latest round of grants from the Marsden Fund.
Robert Thompson is the poster boy to inspire every student who's ever suffered their way through a maths lesson. Equations and formula that leave many cold are leading the mathematician closer to every child's dream: an invisibility cloak.
Mr Thompson will spend the next three years researching transformation optics. His findings could be used in the future to create materials that bend light around an object and so cloak it, or make it invisible.
“Where my job comes in can be taking the desired path that light will take and translating it into the right kind of device or material that will make that happen,” says Mr Thompson.
His work, which is being paid for through the Marsden Fund, will be applied first in more mundane ways, including developing new and better antennae for mobile phones.
Mr Thompson and 85 other researchers were chosen to share more than $54 million of funding, beating out more than 1000 other proposals.
Scientist Juliet Gerrard heads the Marsden Fund Council and is excited about the new projects.
“These are ‘oh wow’ brand new idea projects that can really make a difference in terms of social difference, cultural understanding or maybe a brand new business,” she says.
Many of the projects will take years to come to fruition, but the council is expecting they'll put New Zealand at the cutting edge of research and development.
3 News
source: newshub archive
