Victoria awards for research

Four University of Melbourne scientists have been recognised for their contributions to research with the presentation of the Victoria Prize and three Victoria Fellowships.

The prestigious awards were presented at Parliament House by the Minister for Innovation, Services and Small Business, Louise Asher.

The 2011 Victoria Prize has been awarded to Professor Andreas Strasser, who is based at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has worked in the field of cancer research for more than 20 years.

The 2011 Victoria Fellows include Liang Chen, Brett Paterson and Jaclyn Pearson who will visit collaborators overseas to further their research.

The University of Melbourne’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Jim McCluskey says the awards recognised a dedication to world-class research and a commitment to solving difficult problems.

“The awards highlight the recipients’ ingenious approaches to challenging issues that are relevant to everyday life,” Professor McCluskey says.

Professor Strasser has provided revolutionary insights into how cells work and why they go wrong in cancer, particularly in the field of programmed cell death, or apoptosis.

Professor Strasser and his team showed that abnormalities in the control of apoptosis can cause autoimmune disease or cancer and prevent tumour cells from responding to anti-cancer therapy.

This research has major implications, opening new therapeutic strategies for cancer, autoimmune and degenerative diseases.

The $50,000 Victoria Prize is awarded annually by the Victorian Government to a scientist whose discovery or technological innovation has significantly advanced knowledge or has provided commercial and other benefits to the community.

The University of Melbourne’s 2011 Victoria Fellows include Engineering PhD student Liang Chen, awarded for his work on network efficiency.

During his postgraduate studies at the University of Melbourne’s School of Engineering and NICTA Victoria Research Laboratory, Mr Chen developed a promising low-cost new signal processing method, which may provide enormous improvement in network reliability and efficiency in optical networks. He will use the award to travel to the US and Europe to conduct further research and test the commercial potential of his innovation.

Synthetic chemist Brett Paterson has been awarded a 2011 Victoria Fellowship for his research into new diagnostic molecular agents for use in detecting early stage cancer.

During his postgraduate studies in the University of Melbourne’s School of Chemistry at the Bio21 Institute, Dr Paterson designed a new chemical reaction for molecules that can help target tumours to produce high quality, non-invasive images that are used to diagnose tumours and then monitor treatment.

The award will allow Dr Paterson to travel to King’s College, London, to use the copper-64 radioactive isotope, a technology that is not yet available in Australia, to test out the efficacy of the molecules he has developed.

Microbiologist Jaclyn Pearson has been awarded a 2011 Victoria Fellowship for her work on the bacteria Escherichia coli (E.coli) during her postgraduate studies at the University of Melbourne’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

E. coli normally lives harmlessly in people’s stomachs helping to digest food. Ms Pearson is investigating why some types of E.coli have evolved to cause diarrhoeal disease and kidney failure, particularly in children.

She will travel to the Institut Pasteur in Paris to use specialised imaging technology that shows precisely how the bacteria injects proteins into the gut, resulting in disease.

The Victoria Fellowships, each worth $18,000, recognise young researchers with leadership potential and help to enhance their future careers, while developing new ideas which could offer commercial benefit to Victoria.