Key Personnel

Professor Joerg Kistler

Educated in Switzerland, Professor Kistler joined the University of Auckland in 1984 and was appointed to a Personal Chair in Cellular and Molecular Biology in 1999. His research in molecular ophthalmology has led to close to 100 published articles and was recognised by his election as Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1997. Professor Kistler was Director of the School of Biological Sciences from 2001-2010. He developed world-class equipment facilities around structural biology, genomics and proteomics, and established the Bioinformatics Institute in 2004. The School also hosts the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery which focuses on novel human therapeutics and is one of seven Centres for Research Excellence funded by the New Zealand Government. Professor Kistler is the founder and Director of the Institute for Innovation in Biotechnology (IIB) which supports the growth of the bio-industry through provision of research infrastructure, enterprise training programmes, and networking events.

Professor Siah Hwee Ang

Siah is Professor in Strategy at the Business School. He joined the University of Auckland in September 2003 after three years at Cass Business School, City University, London. He obtained his PhD and taught at the National University of Singapore Business School. Siah Hwee conducts research in the areas of alliances and acquisitions, competition, technology strategy, and international business strategy. He also has special interests in biotechnology, venture capital, reputation dynamics, and management research methods. His works have been published in top international journals such as Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies and Long Range Planning. His research has resulted in five major research awards, including Conference Best Paper Award, University’s Early Career Research Excellence Award, the Business School’s Research Excellence Awards, as well as National University of Singapore’s Best PhD Thesis Award. He sits on the editorial board of 6 journals, most notably that of the prestigious Academy of Management Journal and Long Range Planning, and has been a reviewer of more than 450 papers.

Siah teaches both strategy and research methods courses at the executive and postgraduate levels. He has supervised over 40 graduate research students. Some of the collaboration with students has resulted in publications and conference presentations. He has worked/currently working with executives from the largest institutions in New Zealand such as Fonterra, Fletcher Building, Fairfax Media, TV New Zealand, Genesis Energy, AucklandPlus, New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants, TCI Network (Spain), Civil Service College (Singapore) and has supervised students/teams working within institutions such as Ernst & Young (Germany), New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, Ministry of Research Science and Technology (NZ), Fonterra, Fletcher Building and Fairfax Media.

Dr Lyn Lavery

Lyn Lavery is the Director of Academic Consulting, a New Zealand based company that provides a wide-range of training and research services, to academic and government researchers. Lyn specialises in teaching Research Methods across a wide range of disciplines, including Business, Health/Medicine, and Social Sciences. While the majority of her recent work is with academic and government researchers, she has extensive experience assisting postgraduate students with the skills they require for their research work. In addition, her PhD research specifically examined the instruction of self-regulated learning strategies to postgraduate-level business students. Lyn’s research strengths are data management, qualitative data collection and analysis, mixed methods, and research software. As a business owner herself, she also has a very real appreciation of the issues involved in starting-up and developing an innovative company within the New Zealand context.

Dr Victoria Little

Vicki is a senior lecturer in the Department of Marketing; currently on leave of absence at Monash University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She has worked in and consulted to a wide range of New Zealand businesses. Her research interest is in conducting relevant and impactful research at the nexus of marketing research, strategy and practice, and she is accordingly part of the Contemporary Marketing Practice (CMP) Group. She has published in various international conference proceedings, and in the Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Marketing Theory, Innovation: Management, Policy and Practice and the International Journal of Learning & Change. She is on the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, and the Journal of Business Market Management. Vicki is a committed educator, with a reputation built on innovation and values-based teaching. Her Stage III marketing strategy paper introduced experiential learning to senior students through industry partnerships and leveraging the university’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Her executive teaching experience includes the Auckland MBA, short courses and corporate programmes, and she was a foundation instructor and Board of Studies member on the internationally recognized Master of Bioscience Enterprise programme.

Dr David Welch

David Welch is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Population Health. He has a background in Psychology, Physiology, and Epidemiology, and has taught extensively on the topic of Research Methods. David has written peer-reviewed articles in international journals, mostly in health research and epidemiology. He has also delivered many oral and poster presentations at conferences. Other than skills in academic writing and data presentation, his strengths are the design of research, questionnaire design, the statistical analysis of data, and data management.

Daniel Vidal

Daniel is an on-going guest lecturer in SCIENT722 and SCIENT705 in which he covers strategy and IP valuation topics, and also facilitates research commercialisation projects.

He is a general management consultant with strong hands-on systems and business strategy development experience gained in top international companies. He has extensive consulting and advisory background with specific strengths in IT-driven transformation, business performance enhancement, change management, and improving competitive position. Daniel is a partner of a boutique management consulting firm in Auckland, and of Intellectual Capital Ratings (NZ) Ltd, a strategic partner of Intellectual Capital Sweden, the world’s premier organisation in the area of assessment of intangible assets.

Daniel has been lecturing in the Business School at a postgraduate level since 1995. Currently, Daniel teaches the Managing Business Growth Project paper in the MBA programme, Quantitative Research Methods in the MCom, and Strategy in the PGDip. He was awarded the Business School Teaching Excellence Award to Excellence in Executive Teaching.

Dr Thomas Bohné

Thomas is a lecturer in innovation at The University of Auckland Business School in the Department of Management and International Business. His research broadly focuses on how human capacity and technology can be combined in new ways to create solutions that can make a significant contribution towards a better future.

Thomas holds both a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge, and an M.Litt. from the University of St. Andrews. He was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University from 2007 to 2009. He gained industry experience working for a diverse range of companies including ALDI, Arthur Andersen, Deutsche Bank, GermanCapital, Scottish Institute for Enterprise, STADA Arzneimittel, and The Boston Consulting Group. Thomas has received several prestigious fellowships from institutions such as the UK Government's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, European Commission, Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft, and Förderverein Kurt Fordan für herausragende Begabungen. He also has received a Hayek Fund Award, Lundgren Research Award, and Ford of Britain Trust Grant. He was selected as a Fellow of the European Economic Association to attend the 3rd Meeting of the Winners of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Dr Charlotta Windahl (MSc Chem. Eng, PhD Industrial Management (Sweden))

Having been part of the Business School and the University of Auckland since 2007, Charlotta joined the Department of Marketing in January 2010. Before starting her academic career, she worked as a consultant for the Swedish Trade Council in Paris – dealing with Swedish companies that wanted to establish or develop their business in France.

Charlotta’s research interests are product and service innovation, open innovation, knowledge integration and inter-firm relationships and include issues related to corporate strategy and sustainability.

Charlotta’s teaching portfolio includes Marketing Strategy, Services Marketing and Management and the Master in Bioscience enterprise programme. Previously she has been course coordinating Innovation and New Product Development (ENGGEN 405/ MGMT 305) and also involved in teaching Technology Management (MECHENG 451). In Sweden, Charlotta lectured at undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as at Executive courses, within the areas of Industrial Management and Organisation, Project Management, Leadership Studies and Team Work.

Charlotta enjoys sailing, music, travelling and her husband’s cooking. Currently most of her spare time is dedicated to spending time with her family and friends and more specifically her 2.5 year old son and 8 months old daughter.

Associate Professor Richard Brookes (BCA (Wellington), MSc (London))

Richard Brookes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing at The University of Auckland. He teaches mostly strategic marketing in the Faculty's Executive Programmes, such as the MBA, and has received a University Distinguished Teaching Award.

His major research initiative is the Contemporary Marketing Practices (CMP) project with colleagues in New Zealand and internationally. He is closely associated with ESOMAR (The European Society for Opinion and Market Research), particularly with respect to research in global automotive marketing.

He has Chaired the Judging Panel for the NZ Marketing Association/Marketing Magazine Annual Marketing Awards (2004-2009) and the Judging Panel for the Market Research Society of New Zealand bi-annual Market Research Effectiveness Awards (2006, 2008, 2010). He has published widely in journals, books and conferences. Over the years he has been involved in the development and/or implementation of marketing strategies for various private and public sector organizations.

Professor Wendell Dunn

Wendell Dunn holds the Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship and is a principal architect of the Bioscience Enterprise academic programmes, in which he teaches Commercialisation. He holds degrees from Johns Hopkins, Southern California, and Michigan and, prior to arriving from the USA in 2003, served on the business faculties of the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania (Wharton), and Virginia (Darden), and the College of William and Mary. He has taught Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Commercialisation for some 30 years, primarily at the post-graduate professional level, and served as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University’s medical school. Beyond academia, Dr. Dunn has nearly 20 years’ practical experience in industry – operating, consulting, and governance – and has served as a senior advisor to New Zealand government. His current interests include commercialisation, intellectual property management, and national economic development.

Professor Rod Dunbar, MBChB, PhD

Professor Dunbar trained as a doctor at Otago University, before gaining a Health Research Council training fellowship and completing his PhD. After 6 years at the University of Oxford, he returned to New Zealand in 2002 under a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship. He is currently Director of the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery, a national Centre of Research Excellence that encompasses a network of scientists and doctors developing new therapies, vaccines and diagnostics. His primary research field is human cellular immunology, especially developing therapies for cancer that exploit the immune system; his lab is also working with other human cells that have therapeutic potential, such as stem cells. Professor Dunbar has contributed 98 publications to peer-reviewed journals including pre-eminent biomedical journals such as Science and Nature Medicine.