Women Achieving in Science
Compiles by Diana Temple and Gaby Young
Dr LIZ DENNIS
Liz Dennis is one of 27 female members of the prestigious Honouring Women initiative. This is an Australia-wide effort to get more recognition for women in the form of Australian honours. It provides also a network for senior women to interact with each other. Liz, in CSIRO Plant Industry, was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Science two years ago. She feels an obligation to encourage young women in science.
Source: Co:research, Autumn 2002
Dr ANNA ROBINSON
Congratulations to Anna on her election as National Convenor of WISENET, 2002. Anna is an interesting example of an achieving woman, having waited until most women are well established in their scientific careers before beginning hers. After working as a secretary, Anna commenced a science degree at ANU once her children had started school, studying the sciences for the first time at University level.
Her BSc Honours project involved collaboration with CSIRO Plant Industry. With an ANU Scholarship she continued to a Doctorate in Protein Chemistry and Engineering at the Research School of Chemistry, ANU, which included the crystal structure solution of an inhibitor bound enzyme.
Anna is now a post-doctoral Research Fellow at John Curtin School of Medical Research investigating the structure and function of enzymes associated with detoxication mechanisms in the human body. She is also a qualified coach/instructor in the sport of Fencing. Like other former Convenors and WISENET volunteers, she slots WISENET's administrative duties and associated attendance at formal functions into her busy life.
(Editors’ Note: Please also see Anna Robinson’s letter)
Dr SANDRA ORGEIG
The prestigious Fenner Medal has been awarded by the Australian Academy of Science to Sandra Orgeig of the department of Environmental Biology at the University of Adelaide. Dr Orgeig's research has shown the importance of cholesterol to the functioning of pulmonary surfactant, which controls the surface tension of the fluid lining of the inner lung. This surfactant is important to lung inflation and the transfer of oxygen and carbon dioxide between air and bloodstream.
Source: Australasian Science 23, May 2002.
SYDNEY PhD STUDENTS
Two doctoral students at the University of Sydney are engaged in interesting overseas projects aimed at assisting problems of wider significance.
KELLIE LEIGH, a PhD student in Veterinary Science, is developing a conservation management plan for Zambia's remaining African Wild Dogs, whose numbers have declined to a level that makes them an endangered species. She is radio-tracking dogs in the Lower Zambesi National Park, and working on a faecal DNA test. The project is funded partly by interested tourists.
SARAH POTTER is researching cerebral malaria, a disease which kills 2 million people each year, in a joint venture with the Institute for Virus Research at the University of Kyoto. Sarah has developed, with Professor Nick Hunt of the Pathology Department, a mouse model of the disease. The free radical scavenger thioredoxin is produced in the mice, to protect them from free radical damage which might be caused by malaria.
Source: University of Sydney News, 19 April 2002
Dr ELIZABETH TRUSWELL
Palynologist Liz Truswell is the subject of a "snapshot" in the May issue of Australasian Science. She had a very successful scientific career in the Bureau of Mineral Resources, now called Geoscience Australia, illustrated by her election in 1985 as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. Her study of fossil pollens (palynology) helped the development of an Australian and Antarctic time scale for geology and biogeography. In recent years she has given up her work as a full-time scientist to devote more time to her passion for art.
Dr SALLY SMITH
Dr SALLY SMITH is the latest recipient of the Andrew Olle Trust Research Scholarship. The Andrew Olle Trust, which is administered by the ABC Science Show, was set up in memory of ABC journalist Andrew Olle, who died prematurely of a brain tumour. On the Science Show of 18 May, Robyn Williams interviewed Sally Smith about her research project on brain cancer. She is studying the incidence of tumours in relation to electromagnetic radiation, with parameters including mobile phone use and proximity of high-voltage power lines.
Dr ROBIN TORRENCE
Robin is a Sydney archaeologist whose work fits, I think, into WISENET's broad definition of science. She has won the Excellence in Archaeological Achievement award of the Society for American Archaeology, which is rarely given for work outside the USA. In the University of Sydney News, Robin says “innovative work in Australia and New Guinea is being recognised internationally.... and will change the way people think about evolution and being human". Robin uncovered and analysed obsidian tools and pottery in Papua New Guinea which proved to be 35000 years old, and studied starch residues on the ancient tools to elucidate early plant usage. This will be the subject of a book.
Source: University of Sydney News May 10, 2002
Dr KAREN FIRESTONE
Congratulations to Karen Firestone on her work at the Australian Museum, with Director Professor Michael Archer, on thylacine DNA. Having extracted DNA from a number of individual thylacine specimens and different tissue types, she has sequenced it using the polymerase chain reaction and confirmed it to be thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). This group is devising a unique strategy to molecularly clone the entire genome of the thylacine. Despite critics of the value of this research, the revival of an extinct animal is a fascinating possibility which Karen Firestone may be bringing closer.
Source: The Australian Museum
MEDIBANK PRIVATE YOUNG MEDICAL RESEARCHERS AWARDS
Congratulations to EMMA BAKER (Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute), Vanessa Murphy (Mothers and Babies Research Centre, University of Newcastle) and MARINA TCHAVTCHITCH (Queensland Institute of Medical Research) for their achievements in winning the Medibank Private Young Medical Researchers Awards in 2001.
(The Editors wish to thank the Australian Society of Medical Research for allowing WISENET to print the above which originally appeared in “The Newsletter of the ASMR” in April, 2002.)
Professor SUE BERNERS-PRICE
Professor SUE BERNERS-PRICE was appointed in 2001 as Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Western Australia. This department of Chemistry has recently been amalgamated into a new School of Biomedical and Chemical Sciences, in which she is Professor of Biological Chemistry. Sue Berners-Price is thus the second woman in Australia to hold a Chair of Chemistry, after Margaret Sheil of Wollongong. With research expertise is in the biological chemistry of gold and platinum-based drugs, Sue Berners-Price went to Perth by way of senior research positions at Sydney and Griffith Universities, after starting her education in London.
Dr SUSAN HENSHALL
Dr Susan Henshall, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research has been awarded the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia’s inaugural post-doctoral fellowship, for a project that will help determine the best treatment for men diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The fellowship, valued at $100,000 per annum for three years, was awarded to Dr Henshall in January 2002. It was awarded for Dr Henshall’s research into the use of genetic technology in determining the optimal therapeutic approach for prostate cancer.
The research has the potential to solve one of today’s big issues in the field of prostate cancer. Genetic information will provide clinicians with more precise diagnostic tools to determine those patients who require radical treatment and those for whom aggressive treatment, along with the common side effects of incontinence and impotence, may not be necessary.
Congratulations to Dr Henshall for being awarded one of the most significant non-government grants ever offered in Australia for research into prostate cancer.
(The editors wish to thank Suzie
Freebury of the Garvan Institute)
Source: Garvan Institute Media Release, April 30,
2002