Back row: John Mamo (CHIRI Director) and Lions Cancer Institute’s Bill Crosthwaite (Secretary), Dot Saunders, Neil Saunders (Treasurer), with Helen McCutcheon (Curtin Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor Health Sciences) and Fabienne Vonarburg (Curtin Senior Development Manager). Front row: Lions Cancer Institute’s Philip Chinnery (Chairman) and Nina Tirnitz-Parker (CHIRI).
The Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) is looking to welcoming the first recipient of a newly launched PhD scholarship thanks to support from the Lions Cancer Institute.
Announced this week and fully funded by the Lions Cancer Institute, the Lions-Lotus PhD Scholarship will attract high-quality PhD students to Curtin University to conduct cutting-edge research for the prevention and treatment of liver cancer at CHIRI.
The scholarship recipient will be supervised by Associate Professor Nina Tirnitz-Parker from CHIRI and Curtin’s School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, an internationally recognised expert in chronic liver disease and cancer.
CHIRI Director Professor John Mamo said he was grateful to the Lions Cancer Institute for its support of the scholarship, which would focus on addressing important research questions about this global disease that affects thousands of Australians every day.
“I would like to thank the Lions Cancer Institute for their funding commitment to this highly important scholarship and look forward to welcoming the successful recipient to Curtin University,” he said.
Nina said chronic liver disease was one of the most rapidly growing causes of death worldwide and continued to present a major global challenge.
“Current treatments for liver cancer are limited and at present only prolong the life expectancy of patients by two to three months. The new scholarship will help to tackle this growing problem by researching how to better identify and treat the disease, which in turn may improve outcomes for people living with liver cancer,” she said.
The Chairman of the Lions Cancer Institute Mr Phil Chinnery said he looked forward to visiting Curtin University and seeing first-hand the work being undertaken by researchers.
“On behalf of our Directors and our WA Lions Clubs, we are both excited and delighted to have formed this partnership with Curtin University and their brilliant research team in the fight against cancer and more specifically liver disease,” he said.
The new agreement, signed on 1 August, will fund a full PhD scholarship for up to 3.5 years and will be available to domestic PhD students in Australia. The successful recipient will commence at Curtin in late 2020 or beginning of 2021.
Philip and Nina signing the agreement.
