More than 230 senior secondary school pupils from throughout the country are attending the latest week-long annual camp, which aims to encourage the youngsters to opt for careers in science.
Teaching Fellow Chris Edwards, who leads an information science department project on computer-related forensics, noted that these days many people were using various forms of computers and computerised communication devices.
This meant such use often contributed to the "chain of evidence" in criminal cases, even if the specific crime under investigation did not itself directly involve computers, Mr Edwards said.
Six of the pupils have this week taken up a computer forensics challenge involving one "stolen" toy panda, called Ruffles.
The pupils were invited to sift through data on a hard disk drive, as well as a USB flash drive - the latter a portable data storage unit - and a cellphone memory card, as well as analysing email clues in order to track down the elusive Ruffles.
They solved the "crime", which turned out to be an inside job, and duly recovered the missing panda.
One of the participants, Shaun Chalmers, of Invercargill, said he had been struck by the fact that material which people thought they had safely deleted from computer systems was often "still there" and could be recovered.
It was also "kind of scary" that offenders could exploit computer security weaknesses to obtain private information, he said.
Kelly Flett, of Waitara, northeast of New Plymouth, said the science camp had "definitely interested" her in considering a science career.
