In October, Dr Peter Dracatos was awarded the inaugural Aristotle Award for Education.
It was awarded to him the Department of Primary Industries Victoria, Biosciences Research Division Awards evening held at Queen's Hall Victorian Parliament House.
The award was presented by Joe Helper, the Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Small Business, for research excellence in terms of scientific output (4 peer reviewed journal articles) during his PhD.
Peter Dracatos is a recent PhD graduate from La Trobe University (Botany Department) and conducted most of his research at the Victorian AgriBioscience Centre (VABC) where he was supervised and mentored by Professor John Forster the State-wide leader for Molecular Genetics for DPI.
This main university supervisor was Dr Anthony Gendall and he was co-supervised by Dr Philip Keane.
Since PhD completion Peter has been working with the company Hexima, Professor Marilyn Anderson and Dr Kim Plummer as part of a collaboration working on the antifungal properties of an antimicrobial peptide from ornamental tobacco.