La Trobe gains seven Future Fellowships
Future Fellow Dr Christine Hawkins, centre, and her research team.
Whether the proverbial PhDs driving taxis around the backstreets of Melbourne exist or not, Australia could clearly make better use of its most highly trained graduates.
For instance, says Head of Molecular Sciences Professor Nick Hoogenraad, of the 1,000 or so doctoral candidates who graduate in the sciences each year, a much smaller number find jobs in their chosen area, and many have to go overseas. ‘The rest are lost to science.’
To provide greater opportunities in Australia, the Federal Government through the Australian Research Council has instituted the Future Fellowships scheme – 200 Fellowships a year for the five years between 2009 and 2013. The aim is ‘to promote research in areas of critical national importance by giving outstanding researchers incentives to conduct their research in Australia’.
The Fellowships provide mid-career researchers with a lot more than prestige – a salary of between $95,000 and $135,000 a year for four years and another $50,000 a year to their home institution for infrastructure, travel and equipment. No wonder the competition for this year’s first round was fierce.
And La Trobe University, with seven Future Fellows, did extremely well – the ninth largest number for any institution, and better than many more highly fancied organisations. The resulting grant income amounts to nearly $5 million.
Five of the Future Fellows are associated with the new La Trobe Institute of Molecular Science (LIMS). Four of are from the Department of Biochemistry in the School of Molecular Sciences.
The Future Fellows are:
Dr Linda Bennett of the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society will be investigating infertility in Indonesian women and its impact on their lives. Greater understanding of this problem should lead to improvements in infertility care.
Dr Suzanne Cutts in the Department of Biochemistry will probe how to increase the effi ciency of a long-used group of anti-cancer compounds, the anthracyclines. She is hoping to develop a means of delivery to ensure that these compounds kill only tumour cells.
Dr Christine Hawkins in the Department of Biochemistry will be studying the molecular control of apoptosis or programmed cell death in the face of viral infection, where cells are induced to commit suicide thereby preventing spread of the virus. Compounds which regulate apoptosis may be attractive as anti-viral and anticancer targets, useful both in medicine and agriculture.
Dr Birgit Hellwig of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology is looking at how the people who use the Baining family of languages in Papua New Guinea classify the world around them. Her studies should not only provide insight into how these groups of people think, but should also shed light on their history and interrelationships.
Dr Hamsa Puthalakath in the Department of Biochemistry is studying another aspect of apoptosis, focused on a regulatory compound, known as Bim, which has been implicated in many different cancers. Bim actually suppresses tumours, but problems arise when the gene responsible for it mutates or becomes less active.
Dr Colin Smith, who is coming from Germany’s Max Planck Institute to join the Department of Archaeology and LIMS, studies molecules trapped in time, such as proteins in bones from archaeological sites. The structures and atomic types included in these molecules can provide clues as to ancient diets, environments and health, and are particularly relevant to the study of climate change.
Dr Kaye Truscott in the Department of Biochemistry will be investigating the mechanisms which ensure molecular quality control in the cell’s energy factories, the mitochondria. Disruption of such mechanisms is at the heart of many degenerative diseases.