Young Tall Poppy Science Award winners - Victoria 2008

Associate Professor Kylie Ball, Deakin University, researches Obesity and its implications for society. Obesity is recognised as a major threat to health. While we know that obesity is caused by consuming more food than we are burning through physical activity, we don’t yet have a good understanding of the underlying drivers of the obesity epidemic.

Her research aims to provide a more detailed understanding of the causes of obesity and the best ways to prevent it. She also examines why poor diets, sedentary lifestyles and obesity are more common amongst certain groups in society, including people who are experiencing socio economic disadvantages, and how we might help promote healthier behaviour and reduce obesity in such groups.

Dr Natalie Borg, Monash University,  studies the three dimensional shape of proteins and is interested in how two immune systems’ proteins interact with one another to generate an immune response. One of the proteins, surveys our cells for foreign lipid fragments, captures them and takes them to the cells surface. Natural killer T cells scan the lipid fragments that have been captured by CD1d to determine whether the fragments belong to the body.

Natalie’s research has enabled the first visualisation of the interaction of a Natural killer T cell with a lipid fragment captured by CD1d. Combined with a thorough functional analysis this data has greatly enhanced our understanding of our immune response to infection.

Associate Professor Josephine Forbes, Baker ID Heart & Diabetes Institute, researches diabetes and its complications, which are set to become the major health epidemic of this century. More than 1.5 million Australians are affected and approximately half of these will develop complications which cause debilitating disease including blindness, kidney disease and heart attacks. Her research focuses on a sticky caramelisation process termed advanced glycation which occurs in our bodies during natural ageing but is accelerated in diabetes.  Modern food cooking and processing techniques also cause advanced glycation and so we also consume these sticky protein modifications every day in our diet.  Josephine aims to simplify the pathways of damage caused by advanced glycation and identify common events which could be useful in the development of unique therapeutics. This is desperately needed since current therapies only slow the progression of diabetic kidney disease which is also the major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes where the only treatment is a kidney transplant or dialysis. Josephine has already discovered one such target which is currently undergoing clinical trials. In recognition of her international reputation, she is this year’s recipient of the Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for excellence in medical research.

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Associate Professor Paul Gorry, Burnet Institute, whose principle area of research is in understanding HIV causes, AIDS and AIDS related complications. HIV invades the brain and is a common cause of dementia in people living with HIV. His studies aim to prevent HIV from penetrating the brain, thereby reducing the chance of patients with HIV developing dementia. HIV causes AIDS by infecting and destroying the body’s immune cells. This research aims to understand how HIV enters cells, and to prevent this by development of new drugs and vaccines to block this step in the virus life cycle.

Dr Kieran Harvey, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and his team investigate the mechanism by which the organ size is controlled during development. Key roles in characterising a key determinant of organ size the Salvador-Warts-Hippo (SWH) pathways. The SWH pathways restrict organ size by stimulating apoptosis, and by restricting cells from growing and dividing excessively.

He has rapidly and effectively made the transition from postdoctoral fellow to principal investigator of he own independent research program and has already made an enormous impact on the work being undertaken across the research division at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

Dr Brendan Jenkins, Monash University, whose research involves stomach (gastric) cancers which is the second most common cause of cancer related deaths worldwide, and represents a growing number of cancers, including liver, prostate & colon, associated with chronic inflammation. The mechanisms by which inflammation can lead to cancer are poorly understood. Brendan’s research has discovered that blocking the signalling pathways of a particular protein (STAT3) inside stomach cells can prevent inflammation and tumour formation in pre-clinical mouse models of gastric cancer.
Brendan has been successful in establishing a broad network of basic science and clinical collaborators.

Dr Brian Krongold, University of Melbourne, has mainly focussed his research in wireless, wire line (DSL for example), and optical communication systems. By theorizing and designing new approaches and practical algorithms, the goal is to further advance communications systems by reducing equipment cost, better utilising bandwidth in the airwaves, increasing the data rate (speed), and reducing power consumption. Such systems are vital to future communications infrastructure and a growing economy, as well as Australia’s information technology reputation.

Brian’s main focus is on the modulation technology known as Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM), where a large bandwidth is split into a large number of sub channels through efficient signal processing. Brian has made significant contributions in power and bit allocation algorithms for a variety of OFDM systems and scenarios (single or multi user, fading channels, multiple antenna systems). This includes a US patented and a highly cited algorithm that has recently been licensed to Rim Semiconductor.

Dr Sandra McLaren, University of Melbourne, is motivated by the importance of the Earth Sciences in global resource sustainability and contemporary political, economic and social issues. She has worked on a wide range of problems in earth science research and her research interests have evolved in part to maintain relevance to the wider community. Her most notable contributions have on Australia’s heat producing element enrichment that is, the extraordinary concentrations of the naturally radioactive elements, uranium, thorium and potassium, which seem to be a unique feature of Australia’s rocks.

Sandra is an accomplished communicator and is committed to education and the promotion of earth sciences to primary & secondary schools and the community.

Dr Kylie Mason, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, is one of those rare individuals who combine an outstanding commitment to clinical medicine and direct one on one patient care, with a longer term vision for improving general patient outcomes through research.  Kylie has worked on a project that examines the molecular regulations of platelet lifespan, with her colleagues. This work was published in the prestigious medical research journal “Cell”.

One of the most exciting potential benefits of Kylie’s research is the possibility of extending the lifespan of stored platelets in the blood bank. This has very major commercial potential and the potential to save many lives by increasing the availability of platelets for transfusion.

Kylie’s results have been patented and licensed to a Victorian Biotechnology Company MuriGen which has chosen to invest considerable resources in the commercial development of her research.

Dr Ian Wanless, Monash University, works in combinatorics, and areas of mathematics currently receiving much attention both nationally and internationally. Ian’s primary research is in the area of Latin Squares, the building blocks of combinatorial design. These are ubiquitous in pure and applied mathematics and statistics. Though Ian studies them from a theoretical viewpoint, Latin Square has an enormously wide range of applications from scheduling to the design of codes for communication.

Ian’s work has already had its applications in the design of computer software. His second Discovery Grant was for a project applying combinatorial mathematics to problems in electronic engineering and communication. Its title is “Information security & digital watermarking in Latin Squares”.