The director of the University of Otago’s agricultural innovation programme will give his inaugural professional lecture "Pharm to farm: Interdisciplinary Agricultural Innovation".
The lecture’s content would be light, he said.
"It won’t bury deep into science or research papers — it is more about what I did along the way to becoming a professor."
He completed his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Otago in 1995.
After working as a research officer for veterinary pharmaceutical company InterAg, he was a senior lecturer in pharmaceutics at the University of Auckland, and then a senior research scientist at AgResearch.
A talking point in the lecture would be his work in a team on cattle Cidr Insert, a technology to improve reproductive performance in dairy cows.
Nature-based solutions would feature in the lecture including the use of microbes to control grass grub and as a probiotic to improve animal production.
He also planned to speak about the importance of getting people to understand the benefits of a new technology and how to use it in the field.
A new technology could be the "best idea in the world" but it would not reach its potential if no-one understood why they needed it, Prof Bunt said.
His research focused on bioactive delivery and he was an author of more than 120 research publications and 16 patents.
Honours and distinctions awarded to him include an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development fellowship, The Chiasma, Uniservices and Ideas Challenge prizes of the Spark Ideas Entrepreneurship Challenge, the Waikato Agribusiness Innovation Awards supreme winner and the Controlled Release Society’s Outstanding Veterinary Paper.
The free lecture is in the university’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre from 5.25pm tomorrow.
A livestream of the lecture is available at www.otago.ac.nz/its/services/teaching/streaming/otago600496.html
