Boomerang scientists

Despite often aired concerns about inadequate funding for science in New Zealand, we're managing to hold onto a reassuring number of world class scientists. Two of them are based at Otago University - Professors Alan Herbison and Stephen Robertson. Alan returned to New Zealand from Cambridge University to set up a centre to study how mechanisms in the brain control reproduction. In a recent breakthrough his team identified signals in the brain that can turn fertility on or off. Stephen was at Oxford but came back to set up a Clinical Genetics Laboratory at Otago. Its goal is to identify possible genetic causes for some rare conditions that strike some families.