Young Tall Poppy Science Award winners - Queensland 2009

Dr David Copland, The University of Queensland

Tall Poppy of the Year 2009

David’s research is about understanding how communication breaks down following brain injury and then how the brain recovers the ability to communicate and responds to treatment. My work uses brain imaging techniques to find patterns of brain activity that are critical to successful treatment of communication and explores new treatments that stimulate the brain to improve language and communication.

To take this research into the area of neuroplasticity, recovery, neuroimaging and electrophysiological recordings was Dr. Copland’s initiative and he has driven the development of the technologies, the methodologies and the collaborations.

Dr Brett Ferguson, The University of Queensland

Brett investigates the signals, and signaling interactions, required for “legume nodulation” at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Integrative Legume Research.  For “legume”, think flowering plant, and pea, bean or pulse families. Nodulation is a mutually beneficial interaction between legumes and specific soil microbes that acquire atmospheric nitrogen to provide to the plant.  Nitrogen fertiliser is costly and can cause unwanted environmental impacts.  Legume nodulation provides the plant with “free” nitrogen, thus avoiding such problems. Brett’s research therefore has the potential to help reduce monetary and environmental costs, whilst improving plant growth and yields.

Dr Clinton Fookes, Queenland University of Technology

Clinton actively researches in the field of computer vision and pattern recognition which is the science of making machines see. His work relies on automatically extracting and interpreting important information from visual sources; including images and video. He has applied this research to a number of areas including biometrics, intelligent surveillance, medical imaging, visual attention, and airport security and operations.

Dr Michael Piper, The University of Queensland

Michael’s research aims to identify how the brain, with its complex network of neurons, develops from a simple sheet of unspecialised stem cells within the embryo. His research shows that the processes involved in controlling stem cell development in the embryo are the same as those that are mis-regulated during cancer formation. This research is relevant to society at large as it is enabling us to understand how the brain forms during development and what might go wrong in diseases of the brain.

Dr Alberto Pinzon-Charry, Queensland Institute of Medical Research

Malaria is one of the world’s major infectious diseases killing almost three million people each year, mainly children and travellers. Many malaria vaccines have been tested but results have been disappointing perhaps because most target only a few fragments of a complex parasite with thousands of components.  Alberto’s work proposes that a vaccine using whole parasites and targeting more components should be more effective. His studies show that a vaccine using small doses of whole parasites mixed with a substance to increase immune responses is able to avoid death or severe illness in animals.  Because of its simplicity, this vaccine would be easy to manufacture and deploy.