Professor Terry Healy MNZM

Rangitoto College student 1958-1961Professor Terry Healy was a coastal marine scientist internationally recognised for his ground-breaking research into coastal erosion, sedimentation and coastal hazard (e.g. tsunami) management, with applications particularly relevant to port and marina developments. His considerable accomplishments were acknowledged in New Zealand in 2010 through a University of Waikato Medal, a Queen’s Birthday Honour as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit and life membership of the New Zealand Coastal Society – only the third person and first scientist to be honoured this way. Terry’s dedication and passion for the advancement of coastal science was an inspiration to all those who worked with him, not least

the 120 postgraduate students whom he guided through to thesis completion and who are now undoubtedly making their own contributions to the field. “It was his philosophy to get all his postgraduate students to attend international conferences, either here or overseas. He believed that was part of their education, having contact with these people they had read about in their studies. I remember helping him with a Coastal Marine Conference in Rotorua and just to see the young ones engaging with well-known experts was a fantastic experience.” Mrs Healy has said.

Dr. Steven NiedererRangitoto College student 1996-1999

Steven joined Rangitoto College in the Fourth Form and spent the next four years growing up. He had the opportunity to be taught by some exceptional teachers, partake in a wide range of social, cultural and academic activities, make the best of friends and meet his wonderful wife. During his engineering degree at Auckland he spent summers creating mathematical models of glacier movement at the Australian National University and making computational models of heart cells at the Bioengineering Institute in Auckland. The challenges and complexity involved in applying mathematics to biology was very appealing, and led him to undertake his doctoral research at the University of Oxford developing a computational model of the rat heart. Following his PhD he continued at Oxford to use models to better understand the effects of

pacemakers on the human heart. He currently works at King’s College London where he focuses on improving the development of personalised models to allow surgeons to better understand disease, select patients and optimise treatments. The transition from writing computer code to collecting data in surgery, evaluating medical device designs and advising clinicians continues to be challenging and exciting. Hopefully in the future he will be able to bring this research back home to New Zealand.

Hon. Amy AdamsRangitoto College student 1984-1988

After leaving Rangitoto College, Amy headed south to the University of Canterbury’s law school where she graduated with first class honours in 1992. Amy spent the next 16 years in private legal practise, predominantly in Christchurch, specialising in commercial and property law, becoming a partner in the firm in 2004. During that time she also served as a member of the NZ Law Society’s Women’s Consultative Group and as chairperson of her local school Board of Trustees. Amy entered politics in 2008 gaining selection for the National party in her home seat of Selwyn (rural Canterbury) and winning the seat in that year’s general election. In her first term in Parliament Amy served as chairperson of both the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee (as only the

second woman to ever do so) and the Electoral Legislation Select Committee. After re-election in 2011 she was promoted to Cabinet as Minister of Internal Affairs and became New Zealand’s first ever woman Communications and IT Minister as well as Associate Minister for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. In April 2012 she became Minister for the Environment and shortly afterward represented NZ at the United Nation’s Rio+20 conference on sustainability.