October 2016 Encouragement Award promotion

We would like to thank all those that participated in our October 2016 Encouragement Award promotion.

The topic of our latest competition was focused on the development of Artificial Intelligence. The overwhelming number of responses received on whether this is an exciting or frightening concept demonstrated a very clear message – we’re living a story of epic proportions and the future is ours to seize. The prospect that one day we may be able to co-evolve with silicon based machines is very powerful. Whether we like it or not, AI is already part our lives and will continue to play a role into the future. Thank you to all those that participated in our competition and sent in their entries.

Three entries were selected to receive our award– first prize at $1500 and 2 runners up at $600 each.

Congratulations to our first prize winner, Dr Kim Van Netten, Research Associate, at the University of Newcastle, School of Engineering . She and L/Prof Galvin are currently working on applying the process developed during her PhD for minerals processing.

Kim’s project is focused on selectively agglomerating ultrafine hydrophobic particles from water and hydrophilic particles using a novel hydrophobic binder. The application is in the field of mineral processing, where the valuable, metal containing particles need to be separated from the particles of lesser value. The group have developed a special binder that can achieve this selective separation in less than a second producing agglomerate which can be recovered using a screen. They now hope to implement this process on a continuous basis and scale up for use in industry.

“I plan to use the award to attend an industry based conference or workshop because I feel it is extremely important to establish and maintain communication with people in the field so I can learn from their experience and about the challenges they face”.

Congratulations to our runner up, Dr Michal Bartnikowski, who completed his PhD earlier this year at Queensland University of Technology, Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation. Michal works under the supervision of A/Prof. Travis Klein, in the Cartilage Regeneration Laboratory, at IHBI, Queensland University of Technology.

Michal is currently working on developing engineering solutions to suit an array of medical issues. His research centres on tissue engineering of the musculoskeletal system and the characterisation of biomaterials for use in novel treatment applications. He is interested in targeting systems in a proactive manner, implementing preventative or early-stage interventions rather than developing treatments to reduce symptoms.

“It is my current career aspiration to move my focus to an increasingly proactive or preventative approach, ideally reaching a point where I am able to contribute to an improvement of biological systems above that of baseline health”.

Michal plans to use his award to purchase essential laboratory equipment for his research.

Congratulations to our runner up, Miss Claire Storey, PhD student from La Trobe University, Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Microbiology. Claire is studying under the supervision of Professor Paul Fisher.

Claire’s research centres upon establishing a simple Alzheimer’s Disease model in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.

“I am delighted to have even been considered for the award! I am looking forward to building a career as a research scientist, hopefully in the field of neuroscience.”

Claire will use the award to contribute to the costs of attending a scientific conference during the coming year.

Claire Storey is standing on the far right, next to supervisor Professor Paul Fisher.

We would like to thank all those that participated. The next Travel Award for 2017 will be posted on our website soon.

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