Rate My Professor Ben Te Aika

Ben Te Aika serves as Kaiwhakatere Rakahau Māori and Māori Research Partnerships Manager in the Research and Enterprise Office at the University of Otago. In this leadership role within the Research Division, he supports researchers across the university by facilitating funding opportunities, forging partnerships with government, NGOs, and businesses, and managing research contracts. His work places a strong emphasis on Māori research partnerships, aligning with the university's obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi to promote equitable and culturally responsive research practices. Te Aika, affiliated with Ngāti Mutunga, Te Āti Awa, Kāti Wairaki, Kāti Mamoe, and Waitaha, integrates indigenous knowledge systems into contemporary research frameworks.

Te Aika previously held the position of Vision Mātauranga Coordinator for Genomics Aotearoa, a major national genomics initiative hosted by Genetics Otago at the University of Otago. In this capacity, he advanced the incorporation of mātauranga Māori into genomic research projects. His scholarly contributions focus on indigenous data sovereignty and ethical management of genomic data. He is the first author of the 2023 publication 'Aotearoa genomic data repository: An āhuru mōwai for taonga species sequencing data,' published in Ecology and Evolution, which establishes a secure repository for sequencing data of culturally significant species and has garnered 28 citations. Te Aika is also a co-author on the 2025 paper 'Rakeiora Genomics Platform: a pathfinder for genomic medicine research in Aotearoa New Zealand,' featured in the New Zealand Journal of Zoology, detailing a collaborative platform that embeds Māori governance in genomic medicine development. Additional co-authorships include 'Environmental DNA metabarcoding describes biodiversity patterns in taonga species across a river estuary' (ICES Journal of Marine Science, 2023) and contributions to policy discussions on genomic discrimination in New Zealand health and life insurance (New Zealand Medical Journal, 2022). Te Aika has presented on indigenous perspectives of genomic data management, notably at Queenstown Research Week in 2019, and contributed to events such as Ira Rangahau Māori in 2021, enhancing public and academic discourse on these topics.