Prof Hayne, who is an internationally-respected psychology researcher, has become a part-time associate investigator with Gravida: National Centre for Growth and Development.
Gravida is a government-funded, Auckland-based Centre of Research Excellence, whose members are drawn from the country's universities, medical schools, and other research institutions.
Gravida officials said Prof Hayne was bringing her expertise in biological and cognitive development to the centre.
Gravida's members are biomedical, clinical and animal scientists who are researching the factors which influence the way an individual grows and develops throughout life.
Prof Hayne's membership brings the number of Otago University researchers in the group to 19. Its overall national membership is nearly 80.
Prof Hayne said she was delighted to join Gravida.
In New Zealand, infants, children and adolescents faced several important challenges that ''negatively affect their physical and psychological development''.
But this country was also home to ''world experts in many scientific disciplines that will help us to solve these important problems'', she said. Centre director Prof Phil Baker said that throughout the world psychologists and other scientists were working together on key child development topics.
The same ''cross-fertilisation of ideas and insights'' across scientific disciplines was also leading to some ''remarkable breakthroughs'' by the centre's members, he said.
Prof Hayne was also recently appointed to the board of Treasury and is co-chairwoman of the Office of the Prime Minister's science advisory committee working party on reducing social and psychological morbidity during adolescence.
