Former CHIRI Honours student Nur Dianah Abu Bakar receives her award from Chair of the GESA Research Committee, Professor Alex Boussioutas from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

Two former Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) Honours students flew the CHIRI and Curtin School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences flags in Brisbane recently and their former supervisors, including CHIRI researcher Dr Nina Tirnitz-Parker who supervised them both, couldn’t be prouder.

Nur Dianah Abu Bakar (Dianah), who in her 2017 Honours year was co-supervised by CHIRI’s Professor Marco Falasca, had her poster abstract on chronic pancreatitis selected as a poster of merit at the Australian Gastroenterology Week 2018.

To give you an idea of the size of the audience, a staggering 1,600 registrations were received this year!

Dianah was then selected by the judges to go to the finals, which was an unopposed podium oral defense for two basic scientist and two clinician scientists.

“Dianah was by far the youngest investigator and she won!” said Dr Tirnitz-Parker. “She blew us all away and did an absolutely outstanding job.”

Dianah won a $100 Wiley voucher, registration for the Australian Gastroenterology Week 2019 in Adelaide and will be invited to serve as one of the judges for next year’s poster of merits. She is pictured receiving her award by the Chair of the Gastroenterological Society of Australia Research Committee, Professor Alex Boussioutas from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

Former CHIRI Honours student Sara Pasic in action.

Sara Pasic, a 2017 Honours student co-supervised by Professor Arunasalam Dharmarajan, had her abstract on liver cancer stem cells selected as an oral presentation and confidently presented her work in the same session as laboratory heads and institute directors.

Congratulations to both our former students, who are keeping their fingers crossed for this year’s PhD scholarship application round!

Sara and Dianah celebrate with CHIRI’s Dr Nina Tirnitz-Parker at the gala dinner.