Telethon Institute Seed Funding
28 September, 2012
Congratulations to the winners of the first round of Small Grant
Funding.
Dr Saskia
Decuypere
Project: A novel approach to address the diagnostic conundrum of severe febrile illness in African Children.
Dr Raelene
Endersby
Project: Molecular Genetics of Novel Paediatric Brain Tumour
Models.
Dr Sarra
Jamieson
Project: Understanding the molecular mechanism that lead to
hypospadias.
Dr Hannah
Moore
Project: Validating and enhancing population-based data
linkage for infectious disease research.
Dr Jason
Waithman
Project: Discovery of new regulatory elements in dendritic
cells.
Dr Guicheng (Brad) Zhang
Project: Genome-wide DNA methylation profiling in Chinese
immigrants.
Dr Louisa Alessandri Memorial Fund
13 August, 2012
The Dr Louisa Alessandri Memorial Fund (LAMF) annual Oration evening was held at the Institute on Monday 13th August 2012.
This year we welcomed Professor Donna Cross as the guest orator and were enthralled by her research on bullying and cyberbullying and the incredible work that is being done by her team to try and educate children, families and schools as to the ways that we can prevent children being bullied or put at risk by the rapidly developing online world.
Professor Jonathan Carapetis attended his first LAMF function to
award the Dr Louisa Alessandri Memorial Fund Award for Excellence
and Commitment in Research and acknowledge the contributions made
to the Institute by the nominees.
The winner this year was Kim Khoo, and the nominees were (in alphabetical order): Georgia Banton, Katherine Bathgate, Jenny Bourke, Jenny Downs, Richard Francis, Anna Hunt and Andrew Whitehouse.
Thanks to all who attended and particularly to the LAMF Committee
and volunteers Peter Jacoby, Steve Ball, Jan and Hugh Payne,
Colette Newcomb and Margaret Wood for helping out on the night.
PhD Student wins UWA 3 minute thesis challenge
6 August, 2012
A Telethon
Institute PhD psychology student who is investigating why boys
develop language at a slower rate than girls will represent The
University of Western Australia in the 2012 Trans-Tasman Three
Minute Thesis challenge.
Lauren Hollier, of Nedlands, won the
finals title against 14 other students from UWA who competed to
deliver the most compelling, comprehensive and easy to understand
presentation of their thesis.
Ms Hollier's winning presentation was titled: "Boys, girls and
language: is testosterone the key?" Her research focuses on
the effect of prenatal exposure to testosterone and how this might
impact language development.
"So far I've found that higher levels of testosterone in blood
taken from the umbilical cord at birth, predict less vocabulary for
two-year-old boys. The next step in my research is to examine
aspects of brain development to determine what may underlie the
relationship between testosterone and language development," Ms
Hollier said.
Lauren is co-supervised by Dr Andrew Whitehouse, Associate
Professor, Telethon Institute and Professor Murray Maybery, Head of
School, School of Psychology.
The Three Minute Thesis competition is open to Masters and
Doctoral students and is judged on three criteria:
- Communication style: was the thesis topic and its significance communicated in language appropriate to an intelligent but non-specialist audience
- Comprehension: did the presentation help the audience understand the research
- Engagement: did the oration make the audience want to know more.
Lauren has also been active in science outreach workshops, such as
the UWA Science Experience. Lauren won $3,000 to further her
research and will represent UWA in the Trans-Tasman 3 Minute Thesis
finals at the University of Queensland on 11 October.
Awards boost for top health researchers
29 June 2012
Eight outstanding Western Australian researchers have each been awarded $10,000 to carry out important medical and health research in Western Australia.
The researchers received the money through the 2012 New
Independent Researcher Infrastructure Support (NIRIS) Awards - a
funding program that supports new researchers to get the resources
and infrastructure required to further develop their careers.
"This year's awards recognise eight exceptional, emerging
researchers working across a wide variety of areas such as the
impact of the built environment on health, the prevention of
pre-term births and improving occupational health and safety of
migrant workers," WA Health Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr
Robertson said.
"WA Health has a long tradition of supporting local researchers in
achieving their potential and views research as a vital part of the
health system, contributing to improved health outcomes for Western
Australians."
Dr Robertson said the Department had provided nearly $1 million
for 80 NIRIS Awards over the past 11 years.
Dr Robertson said the work of all award recipients had the
potential to deliver valuable health benefits for Western
Australians.
"I congratulate all of this year's recipients and wish them all
the best for their ongoing research," he said.
The 2012 NIRIS award
recipients
Assistant Professor Hayley Christian - Centre for the Built
Environment and Health, University of Western Australia
Research into the impact of the built environment on health
Dr Jenny Downs
- Centre for Child Health Research, University of Western
Australia
Research into Rett Syndrome, early onset scoliosis and the CDKL5
disorder
Dr Matthew Kemp - School of Women's and Infants' Health,
University of Western Australia
Research into uterine infection and inflammation and their
relationship to pre-term births
Dr Colleen
O'Leary - Centre for Population Health Research, Curtin
University
Research into the effect of heavy maternal drinking on
children
Dr Gianina Ravenscroft - Centre for Medical Research, University
of Western Australia
Research involves identifying genes and developing therapies for
genetic skeletal muscle diseases
Dr Alison Reid - Western Australian Institute for Medical
Research, University of Western Australia
Research involves improving the occupational health and safety of
migrant workers
Dr Natalie Ward - School of Medicine and Pharmacology, University
of Western Australia
Research into nutrition and lifestyle and their roles in heart
disease, high blood pressure and stroke
Associate Professor Lisa Wood - Centre for the Built Environment
and Health, University of Western Australia
Research into the influence of the built environment on mental
health
For more information visit the Research Development website.
Media contact: 9222 4333
......
National Medicinewise Awards 2012
28 May, 2012.
Congratulations Lyn
Colvin and co-authors Linda Slack-Smith, Professor Fiona
Stanley and Professor Carol Bower, on their national award for Best
E-Health Resources, for their study Pharmacovigilance in
pregnancy using population-based linked datasets.
This award acknowledges any electronic online resources, systems
or tools developed in Australia to support quality use of
medicines, medicines literacy and the safe use of
medicines.
Judges comments: Unique and
innovative in that it focused on pregnancy, this project has the
potential to be scaled to the whole population with many
foreseeable benefits.
This is the first population-based pharmacovigilance study of pregnant women in Australia. This project shows that the linkage of dispensing data to pregnancy events for post-marketing surveillance is feasible and would be a major public health resource for the safe use of medicines in pregnancy.
Explaining her research methods for this study, Lyn says "I used the WA population-based health datasets (birth defects, births, deaths, midwives' notifications, hospital admissions) to find all the pregnancies in WA from 2002-2005 (around 123,000) and overlaid the dispenses of prescribed medicines to these women during the period of their pregnancy using the PBS dataset (Commonwealth data).
Once this was in place, I can check specific drugs and see whether there was an increased risk of birth defects in the children born to women dispensed the drug vs. all other children born; whether they were more likely to be born preterm, low birth weight, etc.
The need for timely and cost-effective postmarketing surveillance
for medicines used in pregnancy is evident. If we have the tools to
prevent another thalidomide tragedy, we must use them. Our project
has demonstrated that this approach to the surveillance of the safe
use of medicines in pregnancy is feasible and innovative."
Further information on the awards can be found on the NPS
website.
See also our Scholarship Award Winners page
