The University of Otago announced this week the New Zealand government would invest $5m a year for the next five and a-half years into Genomics Aotearoa — a collaborative research platform led by the university — as part of an extension of their Strategic Science Investment Fund (SSIF) funding.
Genomics Aotearoa is a consortium of five New Zealand universities and five Crown Research Institutes, created in 2017, to ensure New Zealand could join the rapidly developing global fields of genomics and bioinformatics.
The investment allows their research to continue until 2030.
Genomics Aotearoa co-director Prof Mik Black said they were "absolutely relieved" and "extremely grateful" to have had their funding extended.
"We couldn't have continued our work without it.
"That's our sole source of funding for Genomics Aotearoa operations."
The group had initially been contracted for seven years, between 2017 and 2024, to complete specific projects across health, primary production and environmental areas, Prof Black said.
Without the extension, they would have "lost a lot of momentum" in the genomics field — particularly when it came to translating their completed research into decision-making by organisations and making their tools accessible for other researchers.
"If the funding had stopped, we would have completely had to stop that translation out to end users."
They were in the process of mapping out what new outcomes they planned to work towards, and were looking at topics including climate change resilience, biodiversity monitoring and training their younger researchers with the tools to analyse genomic data and develop them in a New Zealand context — who would have lost their jobs were the extension not secured.
They would also focus on ways in which genomics could be used to deliver economic benefit, Prof Black said.
"There's a huge amount of investment being made in this space.
"What this is really allowing us to do is it's allowing us to keep up with the rest of the world and realise some of those benefits that the technology can bring."
