Victoria University breaks into global top 50 for artificial intelligence
Tuesday, 27 January 2026
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Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington has climbed into the global top 50 for artificial intelligence, reflecting a fast-growing programme and research centre that is quietly feeding talent into the capital’s tech and data industries.
The university ranked 50th in the ShanghaiRanking for academic subjects in artificial intelligence (AI) — a significant jump from previous placements between 200 and 300 held by other New Zealand universities.
Victoria University director of AI, Andrew Lensen, said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the result.
Although rankings were variable, “it’s always nice to be recognised for all the hard work we do and all the AI staff we do have”, he said.
The university’s undergraduate major in AI – the first and still only of its kind in Aotearoa after it launched in 2023 – was its fastest growing major.
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It had already doubled in size from its initial intake of about 30 students and was expected to continue to grow.
While the rise of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT had heightened interest in the field, Lensen said the programme was designed to equip students with skills that would remain relevant as the technology evolved.
It included mathematics, algorithm development and core AI concepts, alongside “softer skills” such as data sovereignty and bias ethics.
“These are skills that should allow them to keep up with the pace of change,” he said.
The university’s Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, also established in 2023, allowed it to hire more specialists, increase research autonomy and position itself as one of the country’s key universities in AI, Lensen said.
Provost professor Bryony James said it was now home to more than 35 academics, seven post-doctoral researchers and more than 80 PhD students.
“We have the largest and strongest AI team in New Zealand, as well as the largest AI team in the world researching evolutionary computation, learning and optimisation,” James said.
Recent PhD graduate Zoey Sun moved from Shandong, China, to Wellington to complete her doctorate, joining the centre and working within the Evolutionary Computation Research Group.
Her decision came down to the wide range of opportunities in real-world industrial applications of AI, she said.
Her doctoral work centred on using deep learning to support forestry research, including individual tree-crown detection, segmentation, and species classification, in collaboration with Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research.
“I am really interested in projects about real-world applications, because I can see the real values,” Sun said.
She now worked at Wellington-based company Dragonfly Data Science, as part of the forestry and remote sensing team, contributing to the MBIE-funded project with NASA, a three-year programme developing advanced tools for modelling forest canopy structure using satellite, airborne, and AI-driven data.
“I love my work. I think I’m really lucky to have this job which is very similar to my previous research so I can dive straight in and make contributions very soon.”
Dragonfly director Dr Finlay Thompson said graduates coming out of Victoria University’s centre for Data Science and AI were some of the most “work ready” he had ever seen.
Five or six years ago, it would have been “quite hard” to hire people with specific skills, forcing them to look offshore for the expertise.
“We’re always willing to invest in those entering the workforce for the first time, but students are now stepping into these specialist industry roles and contributing at a high level from day one,” Thompson said.
As a country, New Zealand was not particularly good at recognising when it was good at something but in the particular area of AI used for forestry and landscape management, it was “definitely at the top end globally”, he said.
“There’s a reason why NASA wants to do research with us, they’re interested in what we have here, which is technically quite good.”
Dragonfly had also previously done work in California, doing a big forestry image processing job.
It had been working with the technology required for about 15 years already and had an application running from about 2010 still used today.
It primarily worked in environmental sciences and health and its clients had “actual real world problems they want us to solve”, Thompson said.
As people’s understanding of the technology grew, so did expectations from their clients.
“There are techniques and methods that we’ve had in our toolkit for decades that nobody ever asked us to use because they didn’t think computers could do that sort of thing.
“Now they do, so people are coming to us with problems that they might not have a few years ago and we’re finding that we can solve them, but not using the new techniques, but actually using old techniques that we’ve had for a long time.”
As the economy continued to recover, Lensen was hopeful it would lead to a growth in tech jobs.
“At the moment things are a little tight but this is obviously technology that isn’t going away.”
It was exciting to see a growing cohort of students choosing double majors with another discipline like psychology or ecology because of their unique perspective. Many also came to university with nuanced views of AI; its benefits and potential harms, wanting to be part of its development and have influence on how it was used.
“My main hope is that we do continue down that pathway of trustworthy AI, responsible AI, showing the world how we can do it and use it for good and that there is actually also a really powerful economic opportunity as well.”
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