Women Achieving in Science
Compiled by Diana Temple
Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich is Director of the Monash Science Centre which was recently launched in Melbourne with much acclaim. She is Professor of Palaeontology at Monash University and has many awards, including two Eureka prizes.
Dr Philippa Uwins, a geologist at the University
of Queensland, has been studying amazing very-microorganisms she calls Nanobes.
She discovered these filamentous structures in geologically ancient sandstone
obtained from several kilometres beneath the Australian seabed. These
structures are controversial because, being between 50 and 150 nm in size,
they are smaller than the calculated minimum size (200 nm) required to house
the enzymatic and genetic material of life. However, Philppa Uwins has
published, with colleagues Richard Webb and Anthony Taylor, evidence that
nanobe colonies, containing the elements Carbon, Oxygen and Nitrogen grow
spontaneously and give positive results when tested for the presence of DNA.
This continuing research may open new doors to the nature and origin of life.
Paul Davies speculates that nanobes could be “a missing link on the road to
life”, or “relic organisms from another genesis”. Heady stuff!
Source: Today’s Life Science Nov/Dec 2001.
Dr Catherine Stampfl has been awarded a
prestigious Federation Fellowship to focus on surface science modelling at the
School of Physics, University of Sydney. Federation Fellowships are the
richest publicly-funded research fellowships ever offered in Australia,
planned to reverse the brain drain. Catherine Stampfl, an Australian, has an
international reputation in theoretical physics and surface science.
Applications of her work include catalytic converters in car exhausts. She has
worked at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin, and returns to Australia from a
position at Northwestern University, USA.
Source: UniNews, (University of Sydney) 2 Aug 2002.
Dr Manjula Sharma is a lecturer in physical optics
at the University of Sydney. Commenting on publication of a survey, “Women
Physicists speak: the 2001 International Study of Women in Physics”, she
pointed out that although the survey showed a low proportion of women , less
than 8%, in research and academic positions in physics worldwide, , 3 of 22
tenured positions in physics are held by women (14 %) at Sydney University. Dr
Sharma says that women physicists from other countries attending the
Conference were surprised to hear about Australia’s initiatives in affirmative
action, anti-discrimination and antiharassment. It appears from statistics
that this physics school is impressively ahead in its encouragement of women
in physics.
Source: UniNews ( University of Sydney), Aug 2 2002.
Dr Kristen Nowak was last year’s Young West
Australian of the Year in science and technology. She has won a 4-year CJ
Martin Fellowship, through the National Health and Medical Research Council,
to work at Oxford University with international expert, Professor Kay Davies
on inherited muscle disease such as muscular dystrophy and genetic forms of
therapy. Working in the same area is Professor Miranda Grounds, of the
University of Western Australia, who has won new grants worth more than $1m
for her pioneering work in muscle regeneration. She used stem cells, long
before they became so well known, in her cell-based gene therapy strategy. She
is collaborating with Associate Professor Nadia Rosenthal of Massachusetts
General Hospital, Boston.
Source: Uniview (University of WA) June 2002.
Vanessa Chewings works at CSIRO’s Centre for Arid
Zone Research in Alice Springs. With colleague Gary Bastin, she has been using
satellite data to identify land damage by grazing. This helps government and
the pastoralists who lease fragile arid-zone land in which vegetation is
particularly at risk near watering points for grazing stock. They use
information from the dish which is part of the Australian Centre for Remote
Sensing, next door to the CSIRO Centre, to map specific areas at risk of
damage.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Aug 7 2002.