2025 Winner - Haukapuanui Vercoe
We are thrilled to announce that the 2025 New Zealand Esri Young Scholar Award has been awarded to Haukapuanui Vercoe from the University of Auckland for his outstanding project on Adaptations of Marae for natural hazards resilience. This innovative project beautifully intergates Haukapuanui's heritage, engineering expertise and the power of ArcGIS to tackle real-world challenges faced by the Maori community. Haukapuanui will be travelling to San Diego in July to attend the prestigious Esri User Conference. There, he will have the opportunity to showcase his project in the Map Gallery in poster format, meet fellow Award winners from other countries, and network with and learn from with thousands of Spatial Professionals. Following the Conference, we will make Haukapuanui's poster available on this web page.
Recognising the Runners-Up
The judges would like to recognise the runners up to the 2025 NZ Esri Young Scholar Award:
- Isaac Waterman from the University of Canterbury on his Investigating the Spatial and Temporal Variation of Vape Retailers provision in Aotearora New Zealand: A Nationwide Study project.
- Amber Halton from the University of Canterbury on her New Zealand National Risk Index project.
Thank you to all the other students / graduates who submitted projects to be considered for the award. The judges appreciated the time and effort put into all of the submissions received and your contributions to the field of GIS.
Previous Winners of the New Zealand Esri Young Scholar Award
2024 Winner
The Esri Young Scholar Award was not awarded in New Zealand in 2024.
2023 Winner
Rachel Lawson of The University of Auckland was the Winner of the 2023 NZ Esri Young Scholar Award. As the recipient of this award Reuben attended the Esri Education Summit and Esri User Conference in San Diego in July 2023. Rachel's winning project used ArcGIS to analysis and visualise the impacts of human mobility during the New Zealand International Convention Centre Fire. Rachel wrote up her experiences from the San Diego conference on the Eagle blog. Congratulations Rachel.
2022 Winner
Reuben Painter of The University of Canterbury was the Winner of the 2022 NZ Esri Young Scholar Award. As the recipient of this award Reuben attended the Esri Education Summit and Esri User Conference in San Diego in July 2022. Reuben's winning project used ArcGIS to help the New Zealand Police Force in Christchurch to better allocate their resources and to effectively reduce the loss of lives on the road in the area. The poster that was displayed in the Map Gallery at the Esri User Conference showcasing Rueben's work can be viewed at https://bit.ly/3CWLqml. Congratulations Reuben.
Eagle Technology would also like to recognise Josiah Millar, from the University of Canterbury, as co-contributor to the project that won Reuben the 2022 Esri Young Scholar Award.
2021 Winner
The New Zealand Esri Young Scholar Award was not awarded in 2021.
2020 Winner
Bingyu Deng of the University of Canterbury is the 2020 winner of the NZ Esri Young Scholar Award for her project on the use of ArcGIS and BIM in fire rescue decision making. To learn more about her project visit bit.ly/3fbqcTw. Bingyu was honoured virtually in front of the more than 50,000 attendees at the Esri User Conference in 2020, alongside other young scholars from around the world - Congratulations Bingyu!