Media Release
November 4 2011
UniSA young researchers win top honours at Science Excellence Awards
University
of South Australia’s physical chemist,
Dr Craig Priest has been named
Tall Poppy of the Year at the
South Australian Science Excellence Awards.
And he is in good company. UniSA researchers and graduates took four other honours, including awards in the early career categories for
professionals and educators and one in the PhD Research Excellence
category.
UniSA Vice Chancellor
Professor Peter Høj says UniSA’s success at the Science Excellence
Awards reflects well on the University’s research and teaching strengths
in the science and health areas.
“I am pleased to see this group of winners celebrated for their
achievements,” he says.
“What they all have in common is a passion to make a difference and a
commitment to evidence-based enquiry and education at the highest level.
But I am also pleased to say they reflect significant and growing
excellence in science at the University of South Australia.”
The Tall Poppy Awards recognise outstanding work by researchers who are
already making significant scientific contributions in the early stages
of their careers.
A research fellow at UniSA’s internationally prestigious
Ian Wark Research Institute,
Dr Priest works on ways to control liquids on different surfaces. He is
contributing to the research portfolio that supported UniSA’s rating of
5 for the chemical sciences in the 2010 Excellence in Research for
Australia exercise, the highest rating possible reflecting research
standards well above world class.
“In my research I’m controlling liquids using different types of
surfaces; some with bumps and grooves and some with patches of
chemicals,” he says.
“Using these special surfaces, we can imitate nature - plants clean
themselves using rain drops that run off of their leaves - or develop
new technologies that use tiny droplets containing chemicals or medical
samples.
“I have discovered methods for precisely making, moving, and combining
tiny droplets or streams smaller than a speck of dust to do chemistry
and biology in small devices. These devices will be used for faster,
safer, and more efficient industrial processing, the development of
pharmaceuticals, and low-cost medical care for disadvantaged or remote
communities.
“One day, you might even find them used in your iPhone for early
detection of disease or chemical hazards.”
Winner of the
Early Career STEM educator award for a tertiary institution,
Dr Sarah List believes good teaching very much depends on connecting
with students. She teaches biosciences to new cohorts of nursing
students from very diverse backgrounds.
“I have a bubble of school leavers in my classes and then a cohort of 30
somethings so not only are the class groups culturally diverse but the
students often have very different experience,” she says.
“Perhaps what a lot of them have in common is that science is not second
nature for them – so I really try to focus on using their lived
experiences to help them learn what they need to know. My goal is to get
them involved, to remove some of the fear about science being hard and
to encourage them to understand the human body and therefore their
learning about it as an interrelated system.”
And winner of the
Early Career STEM professional category in health and life science,
Dr Natalie Sinn also understand the importance of
interrelationships.
Her win is for research that examines the influence of diet on
children’s learning and behaviour. So while others are essentially
focussing on the relationship between poor diet and obesity in children,
Dr Sinn is interested in the patterns that exist between bad diet and
bad behaviour.
“My work blends psychology and nutrition and once my PhD research showed
a real connection between Omega 3 intake and improved ADHD symptoms I
wanted to explore those links between food and the brain further,” she
says.
In follow up work her team showed over 4 months, increased omega-3
levels in blood were associated with improved reading, spelling and
behaviour in children with ADHD and learning difficulties. She is now
undertaking wide and larger studies across disadvantaged schools to
assess the impact of omega-3 and vitamins.
Recent UniSA graduate,
Dr Seth Laurensen, won his science excellence award for his PhD
studies in water recycling and soil health.
His project examined the effect of recycled water on the health of
vineyard soils, providing guidance to grape growers using wastewater
irrigation systems and enhancing their ability to safeguard against
future water shortages, protect soil stability and maintain quality of
grape yields.
Congratulations also go to
Dr Daniel Hoefel, UniSA PhD graduate and now working with SA Water
who also won an Early Career STEM Professional Award.
Media contact
- Michèle Nardelli office (08) 8302 0966 mobile 0418 823 673 email michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au