Congratulations to CHIRI PhD Student Shelley Waters (School of Biomedical Sciences), who won the prize for the best research presentation at the Immunology Day meeting of the WA Branch of Australasian Society for Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA) on 10th June.  The presentation was titled “Is saliva an informative non-invasive sample for studying clinical CMV strains?”.  The judges noted that the work was new and interesting – and beautifully presented.

Dr Mark Agostino was recently awarded the Best Presentation by a Post-doctoral Fellow or Clinician, for his presentation at the annual research symposium of the Western Australian branch of the Australian Society for Medical Research (ASMR). The award is sponsored by the University of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University and St John of God Health Care. Dr Agostino’s presentation, titled “Structure-based prediction of Wnt-Frizzled binding affinities”, described the development and application of computational methods for predicting the likely binding strength of Wnt proteins for Frizzled proteins, as well as the Wnt interaction with the Secreted Frizzled-Related Proteins, all of which are of significant interest to understanding a wide range of biological processes at the molecular level, particularly cancer and embryonic development. This work is presently supported by the Raine Medical Research Foundation and the Curtin Institute for Computation, and has been recently published in the prestigious Journal of Biological Chemistry.” Congratulations Mark!

Dr Agostino (centre) receiving the award at the WA ASMR Gala Dinner

Dr Josh Ramsay (School of Biomedical Sciences) has been awarded a prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellowship for Harnessing horizontal gene transfer for sustainable nitrogen fixation – $780,000.  Josh’s interests in microbial gene transfer cuts across many disciplines including agriculture, environment and health domains and this four-year focused research Fellowship will enable Josh to significantly grow his research lines of enquiry.  A favourite amongst undergraduate students for innovative projects, Josh’s research has been consistently published in high ranked journals and received significant media attention.  Indeed, Josh was recently recognised as a rising star at the Science on Swan Meeting 2017!

Please congratulate Josh on this wonderful achievement.

Please wish Corey Giles all the best with his pending postdoctoral appointment at the Baker IDI. Corey is essentially printing off his PhD for submission, which included three first author papers, 11 co-authored papers and has two more first author manuscripts in submission mode. Corey will be joining Professor Peter Meikle’s group (lipidomics), who were keen to secure an early start with Corey. We are confident we will see Corey quite regularly through collaborative arrangements of several CHIRI groups with the Meikle laboratory.

All the very best Corey to you and your family!