“[The 33rd World Health Assembly] Calls this unprecedented achievement in the history of public health to the attention of all nations, which by their collective action have freed mankind of this ancient scourge and, in so doing, have demonstrated how nations working together in a common cause may further human progress”

- extract from WHA33.3, the formal World Health Organisation (WHO) declaration of the eradication of smallpox.

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of the global eradication of smallpox and now also sadly marks the passing of an extraordinary Australian scientist who played a major role in freeing the world of this devastating disease.

Professor Frank Fenner was chairman of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication in the late 1960s. After an intensive global investigation, in what he describes as a stand out day in his career, he had the honour of addressing the World Health Assembly and declaring the world free of the disease in 1980.

His extensive experience in animal pox viruses meant he and the international team he worked with were well qualified to determine that there was no animal host harbouring a virus able to reintroduce the disease to humans. Along with two other scientists, this work was recognised with the Japan Prize which is considered the applied science equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

However his work with small pox eradication is just one achievement in a long and distinguished career.

While Professor Fenner was completing his residency for his medical degree, the Second World War began. Because he believed that the war would be fought in the tropics, he completed a degree in tropical medicine before joining the Australian Army Medical Corps. This proved to be a fortuitous decision as he spent a large proportion of his time in the service working as a malariologist with several well known scientists in many countries including Syria and Papua New Guinea. The observations and experiments conducted led to a much greater understanding of the disease.

After the war, Professor Fenner returned to Australia to work with another great Australian Scientist, Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnett at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. There he studied a disease in mice called ectromelia, which he discovered was actually the smallpox of mice. He was the first to publish with the term mousepox and his studies into the progression of the disease during its incubation period would prove extremely valuable in his later work.

In order to gain some experience in an overseas lab, a fellowship in the Rockefeller Institute in New York was arranged in 1949. There Professor Fenner conducted experiments on tubercle bacilli, a mycobacterium associated with tuberculosis. Following on from his supervisor’s work, he was able to develop a new system for counting the bacteria which had previously been very difficult. Luckily, unlike many of his colleagues, Professor Fenner managed to avoid picking up a tuberculosis infection in the lab. In those days the most common way to transfer liquids in the lab was with mouth pipettes, basically a glass tube that was operated by mouth like a drinking straw.

As the fellowship ended he was offered a position as Professor of Microbiology at the not yet built John Curtin School of Medicine at the Australian National University. He worked in Melbourne until the University provided temporary huts to use while their permanent building was being completed.

Professor Fenner began working on myxomatosis, the virus that would eventually be responsible for controlling the rabbit population, one of the greatest agricultural pests of the 1940s and 1950s.

The virus was spread by mosquitoes, and the initial release of the disease was undertaken in the winter with little success. However in December of 1950, the weather conditions were ideal for mosquitoes and the disease spread rapidly, resulting in an unprecedented 99 per cent mortality rate in the field.

Presented with a unique opportunity to study a virus and its host in a natural environment, Professor Fenner spent 15 years working on myxomatosis. The initial mortality rate placed high selection pressure on the rabbits, meaning the population was quickly reduced to those with genetic resistance to the disease. There were interesting observations about the changes in the voracity of the virus and resistance in the rabbits. He observed in lab experiments that the more virulent, or most deadly, strains of the virus had less opportunities to be passed on as the rabbits were killed more quickly. So the less virulent strains eventually became more common, leading to more resistance in the rabbit population.

As well as his breakthroughs in studying the virus itself, Professor Fenner is well known for other reasons associated with myxomatosis. Around the time the virus was released, there was an outbreak of encephalitis in humans. People feared the encephalitis was caused by the myxomatosis virus and in order to demonstrate its safety to the Australian people Professor Fenner, along with other scientists, injected themselves with the virus.

After a six year term as Director of the John Curtin School beginning in 1967, and his extensive work with the smallpox eradication program with the WHO, Professor Fenner turned his sights on starting a new centre at ANU. He was named Director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies which is now a part of the Fenner School of Environment and Society, one of only a handful of schools of its type for interdisciplinary science.

As well as all of the achievements at the bench and in the field, this award winning scientist was also a prolific scientific writer, producing around 300 scientific papers and eleven books.

Professor Fenner will be sorely missed in both the Australian and global scientific communities. In the words of his close friend and colleague, Sir Gustav Nossal, “What a life, what a career, what generosity of spirit with his many contributions to the Australian Academy of Science. We shall not see his like again!”

The Australian Academy of science has an extensive interview with Professor Fenner on their website.

For further information on Professor Fenner:

www.mja.com.au/public/issues/171_11_061299/fenner/fenner.html
www.riaus.org.au/science/people/healthcare_medicine/frank_fenner.jsp
https://grants.innovation.gov.au/SciencePrize/Pages/Doc.aspx?name=previous_winners/PM2002Fenner.htm

Professor John Shine was last night named the winner of the 2010 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science, Australia’s most prestigious award for scientists.

Though currently leading the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, next year Professor Shine will get back to his hands-on work that has yielded some of the world’s most important biotechnology discoveries.

His work was a major step in the development of human insulin to treat diabetes, and the same technology is now widely applied to the manufacture of other human proteins like blood clotting agents and hormones.

These discoveries are possible because of one significant advance in modern biotechnology- the ability to harness bacteria to produce human proteins in a petri dish.

Made up of amino acids, proteins are the building blocks for almost everything human – from our hair to our skin to our hormones, including things like insulin and adrenalin.  Until Professor Shine’s work, there was no way to produce these external of the human body.

In modern biotechnology, this is now possible by inserting human DNA into bacteria, which has the unique quality of being able to rapidly produce proteins.  Essentially, bacteria is used for its innate machinery, transforming it into a microscopic factory with production lines capable churning out human proteins at high speeds.

But every factory needs an ‘on switch’ and Professor Shine’s work found a way to kick start the machinery into action through a five letter genetic code – GGAGG.

Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is the genetic material that carries the code for every part of our physical existence – both physical and chemical. The translation of that code into useful proteins is a complex, multifaceted process.

One way to think of it is that DNA has the instructions to build the proteins that determine how our body looks and works. But those instructions are written in French and the builders in our cells that actually make the proteins speak English.

For a gene to be expressed (or turned on), the DNA molecule needs to be converted into Ribonucleic acid (RNA) , which acts as a translator, passing the set of instructions from the DNA into our active cells into a way they can understand.  Essentially this language is expressed by four different nucleotides – adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and uracil (U).

This RNA then forms the template for proteins to be assembled by our cellular builders, ribosomes.  By reading the RNA code, the ribosome puts together the amino acids in the correct order to make the protein.

In humans, one gene on the DNA is converted to one piece of RNA which is in turn translated into one protein.

But in bacteria, one piece of RNA can be converted into many different proteins depending on where the ribosome starts building.

So how does the RNA tell the ribosome where to begin?  The answer is the Shine-Dalgarno sequence – GGAGG, a start signal just before the beginning of the protein code.

This on switch was the key to starting to make human proteins in bacteria.  By inserting a human gene, with the GGAGG start switch at the beginning, into bacterial DNA, scientists were able to use the bacteria to manufacture a protein such as insulin.

This was a breakthrough for diabetics, who were previously treated with insulin from pigs or cows which was in limited supply and had side effects.

But this technology is in no way restricted to making insulin, it could be applied to multiple human proteins including other hormones and enzymes like the clotting agent thrombin.  In fact Professor Shine was the first scientist to use bacteria to produce a human hormone (endorphin) that was proven to be biologically active.

After many years of working with biotech companies and guiding the Garvan Institute through years of rapid growth, Professor Shine is preparing to return full time to the lab.  He is setting his sights on neural stem cells, planning to explore their potential to repair the damage seen in diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

To hear Professor Shine speak about his work and achievements, check out this page.

Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year

Dr Kate Trinajstic studied nursing after being discouraged from pursuing a career in science because her teachers thought it wasn’t appropriate for young women.  But science was clearly in her bones, returning to university at the persuasion of her husband to complete a science degree and going on to study fossils as a PhD student.

It may be surprising to learn that there is another Barrier Reef in Australia and even more surprising to find out it’s on land.  About 380 million years ago in what is now the Kimberley Ranges in Western Australia, the Gogo Reef became the resting place for a large number of fish that died en masse for unknown reasons.

Protected by limestone balls that formed around them, these Gogo fish have become something of a buried treasure trove for Dr Trinajstic.  After studying hundreds of these fish, she began to make observations that led her to question the long practiced technique of using acetic acid (humble vinegar) to clear away the rock and leave the fossilised bone intact for study.

While her colleagues remained sceptical, she investigated other ways to examine the fossil-containing rocks and turned to X-ray and other medical imaging technology including CT scanning to undertake virtual dissections.

Perhaps the biggest discovery made so far was the ‘mother-fish’, a fossil which had an umbilical cord still attached to its embryonic offspring.  This evidence of a vertebrate animal giving birth to live offspring put the previous estimation of this phenomenon back by a staggering two hundred million years.

She has now turned her attention to a search for biomolecules – traces of ancient muscle and bone to compare to modern fish.

The Science Minister’s Prize for Life Scientist of the Year

After tossing up between a career in science or law, Dr Benjamin Kile got hooked on science after an honours project gave him a taste of what it really means to work as a scientist.

Dr Kile has undertaken extensive investigations into platelets – the small cells in our blood that help to form clots.  Platelets can be used for transfusions for chemotherapy patients when their own platelets are depleted by the treatment.

But platelets are fussy when taken out of the comfort of our veins and arteries. They have to be stored at room temperature and only last for a few days on the blood bank shelf.  Dr Kile has made a discovery that may go a long way to addressing this problem.

“Platelets don’t just wear out” he said. “We showed that there is a molecular clock counting down.”  In studies of mice, he’s shown that the clock can be sped up or slowed down.  In order to translate these findings to human platelets, more needs to be discovered about why their survival is so tightly regulated and how they are made in the first place.

Like all blood cells, platelets come from blood stem cells – basic precursors that can develop into cells with a specific purpose like red and white blood cells.  Dr Kile was part of a team that discovered a gene called ERG that plays a vital role in the development of blood stem cells.

While this was an important discovery in its own right, things got more interesting when Dr Kile turned to the literature and found that the gene he was working on was already well known as a gene associated with numerous types of cancer.  Essentially the team has uncovered the ‘day job’ of ERG.

This link between the normal function of stem cells to keep dividing and produce normal blood cells and the abnormal division of cancer cells may help scientists to understand why good cells go bad.

From a childhood spent chasing ladybirds and lizards to a career as an award winning teacher, Matthew McCloskey is still passionate about science.

He is the 2010 winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools.

While completing his PhD and working as a research scientist, Mr McCloskey noticed a trend amongst his peers that their love of science often began in their early childhoods.

He has put this knowledge to good work in his teaching career by getting students involved in real experiments.

“In my classes the children do science.  We set out to investigate.  Students are coming up with their own questions, designing their own experiments, making observations and interpreting and drawing conclusions,” Mr McCloskey said.

An equally committed teacher with over 30 years of experience under her belt, Debra Smith is the recipient of the 2010 Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools.  Her fascination with science also began in childhood and also involved getting hands on with experiments to find out how things work.

Most importantly, she recognises the innate value of a scientific education, either as a profession or in our everyday lives.

“Without our work there would be no scientists, and young people would be much less able to make informed decisions about the impact of science and technology on their lives,” Ms Smith said.

Her hands-on teaching covers a diverse range of science disciplines, from kinetics to alternative energy sources through activities like bottle rockets and wind turbines.  Her students even test the water quality of the local river and report to their council.

She has also developed a science club for students that wish to take their interest in science one step further.

Ms Smith’s results speak for themselves.  Her school’s senior science scores are well above the state average and in 2009, 26 of the schools top 29 students chose to study science degrees at university.

Both these dedicated teachers are involved in development of the science component of the new national curriculum and are also working to equip other teachers with the skills and tools to get students more involved in science.

In another parallel, they both describe the most satisfying part of their jobs as seeing the ‘lights come on’ when their hard work is transformed into a new level of understanding for their students.

Congratulations to these deserving winners.

In the 1950s it seemed as if medical science was winning the fight against malaria with the help of the ‘wonder drug’ chloroquine. Over the past half century the drug has saved hundreds of millions of lives.

But now the parasite that causes malaria has fought back. Chloroquine-resistant malaria has become common in developing countries. Rowena Martin is working to understand what happened, and to develop new ways of treating malaria.

In a series of discoveries, Rowena and her colleagues at the Australian National University (ANU) have revealed some of the biochemical tricks the malaria parasite uses. Now she is honing ways that chloroquine-based drugs can be altered to give them a new lease of life.

Rowena’s achievements have won her a $20,000 L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowship which she will use to study the complex biochemistry that gives rise to resistance.

At secondary school Rowena had broad interests ranging from science to architecture. But during her undergraduate degree at university she was given several opportunities to work in research labs – and she was hooked. “I really love the problem solving, lateral thinking, and creativity involved in scientific research. And the excitement when you make the big discovery in the small hours of the morning. It’s a great feeling.”

It wasn’t until working on her Honours project that she learned that the ancient scourge of malaria was on the march again. This year it will infect about 300 million people and kill about a million of them.

But that’s just one part of the problem, according to Rowena. “Malaria places an immense economic burden on a country. It isn’t just associated with poverty, it is a cause of poverty,” she says.

“The parasite’s ability to develop resistance to drugs appears to be inexhaustible, so we constantly need to look for novel compounds and new ways to use the existing ones.”

The parasite enters our bodies when we’re bitten by an infected mosquito. It eventually invades and plunders our red blood cells, consuming the haemoglobin contained within. The digestion of haemoglobin, which takes place in the parasite’s stomach compartment, releases the iron-containing, non-protein component, haem. Free haem is toxic to the parasite, which responds by converting it to a harmless crystal. Chloroquine works by blocking the formation of these crystals, and the parasite is poisoned by the haem it has released.

Ten years ago researchers discovered that just a few small changes in one protein, PfCRT, were enough to give the parasite resistance to chloroquine. But they didn’t know what the changes did. That’s been the focus of Rowena’s contribution.

First, she developed a system to study PfCRT in frog eggs – allowing her to examine it in isolation and in detail. That led to a critical discovery. “We found how the protein acts in the drug-resistant parasite. It moves chloroquine out of the parasite’s stomach compartment so that the drug can’t accumulate at its site of action.”

That research was published in the journal Science in 2009. Now Rowena is working to refine the details of the process, and to understand what the role of this protein is in normal parasites.

“The L’Oréal Fellowship is a great honour. The money will help me develop my career as an independent researcher and build my research team. We will be using new tools such as metabolomics to investigate the normal function of the PfCRT protein and how to inhibit it.”

Qualifications

2005 – PhD (Biochemistry, cell physiology, molecular biology, and bioinformatics), TheAustralian National University (ANU)

1997 – Bachelor of Science with Honours (Biochemistry and cell physiology), ANU

Career highlights, awards, fellowships, grants

2010 – Australian Museum Eureka Prize Finalist for Early Career Research

2009-2012 – National Health and Medical Research Council Australian Biomedical Fellowship

2008-present – Principal investigator, Research School of Biology, ANU and the School of Botany, University of Melbourne

2008-2010 – National Health and Medical Research Council project grant: Characterization of the chloroquine resistance transporter of the malaria parasite

2007 - ASP & Australian Research Council/National Health and Medical Research Council Parasitology Network Early Career Researcher Award

2005 – Australian Research Council Research Associate, School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, ANU

2001 – Australian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology ComBio Student Poster Prize

1998 – Australian Postgraduate Award

1996 – Research assistant, CSIRO Division of Forestry and Forestry Products, Canberra

1996 – Maternal Health Research Scholarship

1995 – Research assistant, New South Wales Agricultural Research and Veterinary Centre, Orange

1995 – National Heart Foundation Vacation Scholarship

1994 – Research Assistant, CSIRO Division of Plant Industry, Canberra

Research highlights

• More than ten presentations at Australian and international conferences and institutions including three invited conference and seminar presentations
• Thirteen publications including six first-author journal articles, three reviews and two book chapters
• A first-author paper in Science and a co-first-author paper in Nature
• Actively involved in editorial and peer review for a variety of journals and grants
• Currently supervising several PhD and Honours students

We need better ways of capturing carbon dioxide emissions from power stations and industry. And we won’t be using hydrogen cars until we’ve developed practical ways of carrying enough hydrogen gas in the fuel tank. Deanna D’Alessandro’s understanding of basic chemistry has led her to create new, incredibly absorbent chemicals that could do both these jobs and much more.

It’s all to do with surface area. Working in California and in Sydney she has constructed crystals that are full of minute holes. One teaspoon of the most effective of her chemicals has the surface area of a rugby field. What’s more, the size and shape of the pores can be customised using light. So she believes she can create molecular sponges that will mop up carbon dioxide, hydrogen, or in theory almost any gas – and then release it on cue.

A postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Chemistry at The University of Sydney, Deanna has always had a passion for chemistry. “At school I realised that chemistry explains everything – what colours the world, who we are, how we got here.” In return, chemistry has rewarded her passion – taking her around the world from her home town of Cairns. “I’ve presented my work in the US, UK, China and Europe. I love that aspect of science – it’s a global activity, a global community.”

Deanna’s compounds are similar in principle to the molecular structures in seashells and in microscopic marine plants called diatoms. These naturally-occurring materials are commonly used in toothpaste, laundry detergents, kitty litter and industry generally.

Deanna’s high tech equivalents are crystals known as metal-organic frameworks – clusters of charged metal atoms linked by carbon-based groups. While she didn’t invent these frameworks, Deanna has developed new kinds which are more robust and which have molecular pores that can be shaped using light.

Many crystals have been made that can absorb carbon dioxide, but few can survive the hot, wet environment of a power station flue. The best carbon capture technology currently in use is based around toxic chemicals and uses about 40% of the energy generated by the power station.

During her time as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, Deanna created frameworks that could survive the tough environmental conditions and still capture carbon dioxide. They’re not ready for commercial use yet – but they are a step closer to cost-effective carbon capture.

Deanna will use her L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowship to help her take her crystals to the next level. She hopes to create more advanced molecular frameworks, the pores of which can be modified by different wavelengths of light. So, the crystals could be activated to absorb carbon dioxide with red light, for example, and to release it with light of another colour.

Her metal-organic frameworks could also have many other applications, such as hydrogen storage; gas separation; electrodes for sensors, and capacitors for electronic circuits.

In late 2009, Deanna returned to Australia to develop her own career as an independent researcher. “I’m building a research team here in Australia that will help me turn my ideas into reality and contribute to a sustainable future.”

Qualifications

2006 - PhD (Chemistry), James Cook University

2001 – Bachelor of Science with Honours (Chemistry), James Cook University

Career highlights, awards, fellowships, grants

2010-present – University of Sydney Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney

2010 – James Cook University Outstanding Early Career Alumni Award

2008 – Sustainable Products and Solutions Program Grant, “CO2 capture in alkylamine-appended metal-organic frameworks”, awarded to D. M. D’Alessandro and J. R. Long

2007-2009 – Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, USA

2007-2009 – Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellowship. One of six awarded across Commonwealth countries

2007-2008 – Dow Chemical Company Foundation Fellowship of the American Australian Association

2007 – International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Prize for Young Chemists for the most outstanding PhD theses in the chemical sciences (one of five awarded worldwide)

2007 – Fresh Science/British Council Australia study tour of the UK

2006-2007 – Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Molecular Electronics Group, University of Sydney

2006 – Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) Cornforth Medal for the most outstanding PhD thesis submitted in a branch of chemistry in Australia

2003 – James Cook University Doctoral Research Scheme Grant to undertake research in the Centre for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, USA

2001 – Australian Postgraduate Award

2000 – University Medal, James Cook University

Research highlights

• More than 25 presentations at Australian and international conferences and institutions, including eight invited conference and seminar presentations
• Twenty five publications including 16 first-author journal articles and four reviews (all as first author); and a further three articles for mainstream science publication
• Active role in undergraduate teaching at The University of Sydney as well as supervision of Honours students

For further detail on the L’OREAL Australia For Women in Science Fellowships, please visit http://www.scienceinpublic.com/blog/category/loreal

Most women in Australia who have breast cancer recover.  But many then relapse years later.

Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat wants to know why.  If she can solve this mystery, her work will open up opportunities for new drugs and treatments. Her achievements to date suggest that she is well placed to succeed.

In 2006 she was part of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research team that received global attention for its discovery of breast stem cells – a significant step in understanding how breast cancer starts. Marie-Liesse built on this finding with a series of papers exploring how these cells develop and are influenced by oestrogen and other steroids.

Marie-Liesse’s achievements have won her a $20,000 L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowship which she will use to develop her career as an independent researcher and to assist in the care of her two young boys.

Raised on the west coast of France, Marie-Liesse was always interested in biology. That interest took her to a pharmacy degree at the University of Nantes.  “I realised in the course of my degree how important medical research is in creating new drugs,” she says. So she turned to research and to a PhD in molecular and cellular biology at the University Paris XI. That brought her to Australia where she was entranced by the work of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute on breast cancer.

She joined Jane Visvader and Geoff Lindeman’s team at the Institute in 2004 and contributed to the key discovery,  published in Nature in 2006 as Generation of a functional mammary gland from a single stem cell.

Breast stem cells are critical to normal breast development, but if the breast becomes cancerous they are also likely to be at heart of the problem. And that’s been the focus of Marie-Liesse’s work. In a series of high impact papers working with mice, she has  explored how these breast stem cells develop into the wide range of cells found in a normal breast and how some cells are more likely to become aggressive cancer cells.

In March this year she was lead author of a Nature paper revealing that oestrogen and other steroids can control the function of breast stem cells.

“It’s via an indirect mechanism important in understanding how stem cells proliferate, and it could lead to new treatments and new drugs,” she says.

March was a big month for her, as she also gave birth to her second child.

Many women recover from their original cancer but then, sometimes years later, the disease starts again, but more aggressively with the cancer cells rapidly spreading from the breast and throughout the body.

“I will use the L’Oréal Fellowship to find out why breast cancer often returns. I want to understand how the cells metastasise. How do they migrate from the breast?”

“The Fellowship is a great honour and will help me maintain my life-work balance with my two boys. It will help me employ a laboratory assistant to maintain the team’s productivity. The Fellowship will also assist with childcare, and support my participation in leadership training.”

“There are basic questions we still need to answer about breast cancer,” she says. “What is the cell of origin? What causes a cell to go wrong and turn to cancer?”

“I hope that within a decade my work will have changed the outcomes for breast cancer patients, and that it will help us to understand and improve the outcomes for other kinds of cancer.”

Qualifications

2004 – PhD (Molecular and Cellular Biology), University Paris XI, France

2001 - Doctor in Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, University of Nantes, France

2000 - Master in Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology, University Paris XI, France

Career highlights, awards, fellowships, grants

2010-2015 – Queen Elizabeth II Australian Research Council Fellowship

2009-2011 – Cancer Australia/National Breast Cancer Foundation grant: Role of the GATA-3 transcription factor as a tumour suppressor and potential therapeutic target in breast cancer, co-investigator on grant awarded to by Jane Visvader, Geoff Lindeman, Stephen Fox and Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat

2008-present – Senior Research Officer, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium, Melbourne, Australia

2008-2009 – Australian Research Council post-doctoral fellowship

2007-2008 – Australian Research Council post-doctoral Fellowship

2007-2009 – Cancer Council Victoria venture grant: Developing lead compounds to target breast cancer by specific inhibition of the LMO4 oncogene, co-investigator on grant awarded to Jane Visvader, Geoff Lindeman, Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat, Keith Watson and Ian Street

2007-2009 – National Health and Medical Research Council Program grant: Roles of impaired apoptosis and differentiation in tumourigenesis and therapy, co-associate investigator on grant awarded to Jerry Adams

2007 - Lorne Cancer Conference Poster Prize

2007 - International Society for Stem Cell Research Annual Meeting travel grant

2006 - Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale/National Health and Medical Research Council postdoctoral fellowship (exchange program)

2005 - Fondation pour la Recherche Medicale post-doctoral fellowship

2004-2008 – Research officer, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium, Melbourne, Australia

2000 – Research Assistant, Laboratoires UPSA, Paris

Research highlights

• Seven  presentations at Australian and international conferences and institutions, including two invited conference presentations
• Twenty publications, including seven first-author journal articles, three reviews and one book chapter
• Actively involved in editorial and peer review for a variety of journals and grants

Nanotechnology is beginning to pervade society, with the tiny particles finding their way into consumer products such as sunscreens, along with advanced materials, and technology used in ICT, catalysis, chemical and biological sensing and medical diagnosis. It is expected that within a decade, the international market for products embodying nanotechnology will be worth trillions of dollars a year. According to Dr Jämting, in this context it is important that we understand how factors such as temperature and humidity can influence the accuracy of tests that measure nanparticles.

Read ’sizing up the nanoworld‘

The 2009 presentation ceremony for the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science was held in the Great Hall, Parliament House in Canberra on 28th October 2009.

The annual Prizes are Australia’s celebration and recognition of excellence in both theoretical and practical applications of science and teaching that contribute to improving the standards of Australia’s present and future scientific capabilities and aspirations.

Prizes are awarded in five categories:
1.    Prime Minister’s Prize for Science
2.    Science Minister’s Prize for Life Scientist of the Year
3.    Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year
4.    Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools
5.    Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools

This year’s recipients of the awards are:

(L-R) Mr Allan Wittome, Mr Len Altman, Professor Michael Cowley, Dr Amanda Barnard, The Hon Kevin Rudd MP, Prime Minister of Australia, Dr John O’Sullivan, The Hon Senator Kim Carr, Minister of Innovation, Industry, Science & Research

Prime Minister’s Prize for Science: John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan, Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering from the University of Sydney has won Australia’s greatest scientific honour, the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science 2009 for his many achievements in astronomy and wireless technologies.

This award recognises in particular his research into the reduction of atmospheric distortion of electromagnetic signals that contributed significantly to the development and commercialisation of the now ubiquitous technology that features within nearly every WiFi device and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) across the world making them both fast and reliable.

Science Minister’s Prize for Life Scientist of the Year: Michael Cowley

Dr. Michael Cowley has dedicated his career to understanding the contributing factors to a condition that affects nearly two and a half million Australians: obesity.  He is the creator of biotech company, Orexigen, which is currently trialling four obesity treatments that utilise his breakthrough knowledge of the effects of the hormone lepatin on the brain which has the ability to increase or decrease weight.

Dr. Cowley continues to work with colleagues at Monash University to develop therapies that break the relationship between obesity and increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year: Amanda Barnard

For Amanda Barnard great academic success of a first class honours degree followed by a PhD in Physics from RMIT University in 2003, have fuelled an already burgeoning career.

Specialising in the supercomputer study of nano-particle materials on a minute scale, Dr. Barnard defied peers when she created particles in the virtual world to test how their stability would be affected when interacting in various environments.  This work is vital as it reduces the risk and increases knowledge before the development of such particles in the real world.

Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools: Allan Wittome

The rural Badgingarra Primary School students of Allan Wittome understand science as an everyday part of their lives through the great enjoyment they receive from their teacher’s practical applications within and outside of the classroom.

They enjoy active participation in competitions, awards programs and community projects including the Earthwatch Teach Live Whale Sharks of Ningaloo. With Mr Wittome’s guidance and motivation, the students were the first primary school to partake in the F1 in Schools project that brings science off the page and into the imagination of the students.

Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools: Len Altman

The resurgence in Australian geoscience teaching emanates from Marden Senior College in South Australia, where Len Altman is continuing his 36 year teaching career guiding the academic and career paths of not only secondary schoolchildren, but also adult learners and recent immigrants.

Geoscience is needed not only for the mining and minerals industries, but is vital in understanding the challenges that lie ahead as a result of climate change particularly with regards to water security. Concerned with whole of life learning, Len Altman frequently organises multiple events and opportunities for students and teachers at all levels of education and led the creation of Geoscience Pathways, a website demonstrating the essential contribution of geoscience to modern society.

Please visit the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science website to find out more about the individual prizes and award recipients.

Professor Sackett recently sent a congratulatory video message to the Royal Institution of Australia, which opened in Adelaide on 8 October 2009.

The Royal Institution of Australia, which is the first international affiliate of London’s world renowned Royal Institution of Great Britain, aims to ‘bring science to the people and people to science’.  Please visit their website to find out more.