Nancy Millis Award for doctoral theses of exceptional merit
This award is named after Professor Nancy Millis, who served as Chancellor of La Trobe University for 14 years from 1992 - 2006.
A 'legend' in the world of science, she was one of only five Australian scientists recognised on the 'Australian Legends' series of stamps in 2002. During her distinguished career, Professor Millis gained a string of scientific and civic accolades, including election to the Australian Academy of Science, an MBE and a Companion of the Order of Australia.
Selection process
The Nancy Millis Medal is awarded to the authors of outstanding doctoral theses. Prior to 2025, this only included PhD theses. Examiners are asked if they consider the thesis to be in the top five per cent of theses they have examined that demonstrate the significance or impact of the work in their field of research. Nominated theses are then recommended following the examination process and are considered for award through a selection process that involves the School's Director of Graduate Research endorsement and approval by the Board of Graduate Research.
2024 recipients
The following recipients received their award in 2024.
| Awardee | School | Thesis Title |
|---|
Gemma Davy | Psychology and Public Health | Participation and Quality of Life in Caregivers of School-Aged Autistic Children |
Sarah Gyngell | Humanities and Social Sciences | Settlement Organisation and Refuse Management at Zahrat adh-Dhra‘ 2, Jordan: A GIS-Based Investigation of Artefact Patterning at a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Settlement |
Renee Kam | Nursing and Midwifery | An Exploration of Breast Hypoplasia and Insufficient Milk Production |
Panos Elias Karanikolas | Humanities and Social Sciences | Managing Madness in the ‘Deinstitutionalised’ Community: Carceral Control Under Victoria’s Community Treatment Order Scheme |
Kamalpreet Kaur | Applied Systems Biology | New and Emerging Grapevine Viruses in Australia and their Control Measures |
David Lowden | La Trobe Business School | Hidden In Plain Sight: A Mixed Methods Examination of Why There Are No Openly Gay Players in the Australian Football League |
Jenna Macnab | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Understanding the Substitute Decision-Making Process and Practice of New South Wales Public Guardians in the Context of Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities |
Jesse Martin | Humanities and Social Sciences | New Fossil Hominins from Drimolen, South Africa and Their Implications: A Case Study for the Reassessment of Hominin Taxonomy and Systematics |
Akbar Lulu Marzan | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Investigating the Role of Extracellular Vesicles and its Cargo in Cancer-Associated Cachexia |
Sharon Miller | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Yalka Loitjba: Yorta Yorta Langwidj Gunyawoka Wamadaman Woka Maya (Cuppa and Conversation: Yorta Yorta Language Repatriation on Country Therapy) |
Andrew Molino | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Theoretical Investigations on the Electronic Structure and Molecular Properties of Carbene-Stabilised Boron Heterocycles and Beryllium Complexes |
Rahul Sanwlani | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Role of dietary and probiotic extracellular vesicles in cancer progression and therapy |
Natalie Sheard | La Trobe Law School | Algorithm-Facilitated Discrimination: AI-Driven Hiring Systems in Australian Workplaces |
Jascinta Santavanond | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Investigating the Pharmacological, Cell-Autonomous and Non-Cell-Autonomous Regulation of Apoptotic Body Formation |
Boris Julian Sepulveda Molina | Applied Systems Biology | Exploring Genetic Solutions to Minimise Enteric Methane Emissions via Feeding Behaviour Traits and Rumen Microbiome |
Atefeh Taghizadeh | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Development of a Knowledge Translation Tool to Guide Implementation of Motor Learning Strategies within Evidence-based, Task-focused Models of Upper Limb Therapy for Children with Cerebral Palsy |
Brigitte Tenni | Psychology and Public Health | Trade policy, Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines in Southeast Asia |
Mark Tyler | Psychology and Public Health | Investigating the Influence of Severity of Depressive Symptoms on Thermoregulatory and Thermo-Affective Functioning |
Melissa Urquhart | La Trobe Rural Health School | What behavioural impact does tactile art therapy have on children aged four to nine who have experienced attachment trauma? |
Jessica Velasquez Urribarri | Education | Evolving Images of Resistance: Capturing Continuity and Change in the Linguistic Landscape of Protests in Venezuela |
Stanislaw Wawrzyczek | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Birds, Mammals, and Insects as Pollinators of Banksia Species With Divergent Floral Traits: A Comparative Study in a Biodiversity Hotspot |
Scott Williams | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Evolutionary Analysis of Crocodilian β-Defensins: Structure and Function of Crocodylus porosus β-Defensin 13 |
2023 recipients
The following recipients received their award in 2023.
| Awardee | School | Thesis Title |
|---|
Laena D’Alton | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Improving the Suitability of Electrochemiluminescence for Portable Bioanalytical Applications |
Shuying-Debbie Boey | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Classification of Types of Visual Loss, Measurement and Evaluation of their Impact on Activities and Participation Among Older Adults |
Anthony Condon | Humanities and Social Sciences | Reproducing The Gentleman's Game: Cricket and Social and Cultural Reproduction in the British Empire |
Annette Jackson | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Can We Undo Harms From The Past? Developing A Theory of Change To Redress Consequences Of Serious Childhood Neglect |
Aishvaryadeep Kaur | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Theoretical Insights into Boron Heterocycles and Donor Ligands |
Melanie Muniandy | Psychology and Public Health | Facing Stress: Coping Strategies, Resilience and Mental Health Outcomes in Autistic Adults |
Shauni Omond | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Characteristics and Mechanisms of Sleep in the Free-Living Platyhelminth Flatworm |
Elizabeth Porter | La Trobe Law School | Untold Stories from the Victoria Police Lab |
Bianca-Rosa Rodrigues Jardim | Applied Systems Biology | A Genomics Approach to Investigate Phytoplasma Taxonomy and Their Diversity in Australia |
Christopher Simmonds | Humanities and Social Sciences | Government is the Problem? Interrogating the Right Turn in the US 1980 Election |
Kerryn Sylvia | Humanities and Social Sciences | Contemporary Rites of Passage: Everyday States of Liminality and Transformation Through Journey and Play |
Megan Ciara Topping | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | "Treat You Like a Person, Ask You What You Want": A Grounded Theory Study of the Quality of Paid Disability Support for Adults with Acquired Neurological Disability |
Conrad Trollip | Applied Systems Biology | Innovative Fungal Phytopathogen Diagnostics Using High Throughput Sequencing on Forestry Surveillance Traps |
Yunyun Zheng | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Disentangling the Impact of Nitrogen Addition on the Priming Effect of Soil Organic Matter |
2022 recipients
The following recipients received their award in 2022.
| Awardee | School | Thesis Title |
|---|
Zakia Alam | Cancer Medicine | Role of Fosl1 is Mutant Braf Driven Intestinal Tumorigenesis In VivoS |
Estafania Boada Viteri | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Behavioural Partitioning of Mainland and Island Lava Lizard Assemblages in Ecuador |
Juliette Borenstein | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Towards a Conceptual and Practice Framework for Statutory Kinship Care |
Aseel Bedari | Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences | Minutia Modelling and Secure Fingerprint Authentication with Applications to the IoT |
Andrea Bramley | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | The Use of Entrustable Professional Activities Embedded in an e-portfolio to Support the development of Dietetic Student Competencies |
Fiona Burgemeister | Nursing and Midwifery | Implementing and Evaluating Place-Based Initiatives for Children |
Rachael McMillan | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Gluteal Muscle and Tendon in Health and Pathology |
Illia Donhauzer | Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences | On Asymptotic Properties of Non-Linear Functionals of Random Fields |
Kelly Van Egmond | Psychology and Public Health | Test-Retest Reliability and Validity of Wearable Transdermal Alcohol Monitors |
Matthew Felicetti | Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences | Deep Randomized Learning for Industrial Artificial Intelligence |
Wil Gardner | Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences | Unsupervised Machine Learning for the Analysis of 2D and 3D Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Images |
Shannyn Genders | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Characterisation of alcohol-seeking behaviours in gelanin receptor 3 knockout mice |
Karen Holl | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Navigating the Challenges to Contemporary Social Work Practice: Listening to the Voices of Aboriginal Australians |
Mwila Kabwe | La Trobe Rural Health | Bacteriophages: More than alternatives to antibiotics |
Andrea Lewis | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Specific Timely Appointments for Triage to Reduce Wait Times in Medical Outpatient Clinics |
Yuan Lu | Psychology and Public Health | Detection and Management of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) in Primary Care in Shanghai, China |
Dianna Nabbumba | La Trobe Rural Health | Examining Responsibility Allocation within the Social Care System for Older people in Rural Uganda: An Ecological Systems Approach |
Dangedara Nanayakkara | Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences | Stochastic Modelling and Statistical Analysis of Spatial and Long-Range Dependent Data |
Gemma Nourse | Psychology and Public Health | Co-Constituting Drugs, Health and Masculinity: Performance and Image-Enhancing Drug Discourses in Australia |
Douglas Pretsell | Humanities and Social Sciences | The Age of Urning: Queer Identities and Advocacy in Germany, 1864-1897 |
Bradley Thoseby | Allied Health, Human Services and Sport | Peak Match Running Intensities in Australian Association Football |
Tessa Weadman | Education | The Role of Early Childhood Teachers in the Oral Language and Emergent Literacy Development of Preschool Children |
Andrew Whalley | Humanities and Social Sciences | The Contradictions of Care: An Ethnography of Moral and Social Ambiguity in a Harm Reduction Service for People who use Drugs |
Lingling Yin | Agriculture, Biomedicine and Environment | Cross-Regulation of Hormone Signalling by Transcription Factors in Arabidopsis thaliana |
2021 recipients
The following recipients received their award in 2021.
2020 recipients
The following recipients received their award in 2020.
| Awardee | School | Thesis Title |
|---|
| Jamin Moon | Humanities and Social Sciences | Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Law, The Thirdspace and Decolonisation in Australia, Canada and Aotearoa/New Zealand |
| Catherine Papadopoullos | Humanities and Social Sciences | Recasting Transgression in Modernity Prohibition, Pleasure and Otherness |
| Margaret Perrott | Allied Health, Human Services, and Sport | Lumbopelvic Stability in Recreational Athletes |
| Pramod Subedi | Molecular Sciences | Investigating the Mechanisms to Fold Disulfide Bond Containing Virulence Factors in Salmonella |
| Karen Lee Twigg | Humanities and Social Sciences | Along Tyrrell Creek: An Environmental History of a Mallee Community |
| Ashleigh
Murszewski | Humanities
and Social Sciences | Scales of Geoarchaeological Analysis Applied to the Drimolen Palaeocave System: the Cradle of Humankind (UNESCO World Heritage Area) |
| Genevieve Blades | Education | Walking Practices with/in Nature(s) as Ecopedagogy in Outdoor Environmental Education: An Autophenomenographic Study |
| Kaijian
Xing | Molecular Sciences | Engineering the Two-Dimensional Hole Gas on Hydrogen-Terminated Diamond by Transition Metal Oxides Towards Diamond Surface Electronics |
| Angela Burge | Allied Health, Human Services, and Sport | Optimising Home-Based Rehabilitation for COPD |
| Michael
McDermott | Psychology and Public
Health | The Affective Politics of Queerbaiting: Fandom, Identity and Representation |
| Timothy Luke | Applied Systems Biology | High-Value Metabolic Phenotypes for Improved Dairy Cow Health |
| Jana
Batovska | Applied Systems
Biology | Enhancing Arbovirus Surveillance with Metatanscriptomics |
| Brian Devitt | Allied Health, Human Services, and Sport | Aetiology, Diagnosis and Treatments of Anterolateral Rotatory Laxity of the Knee |
| Denise
Jones | Allied Health, Human
Services, and Sport | Physical Activity Following Arthroscopy for Hip-Related Pain |
2019 recipients
The following recipients received their award in 2019.
2018 recipients
The following recipients received their award in 2018.
2017 recipients
The following recipients will receive their award at a special event, held at the Graduate Research School in December 2017.
2016 recipients
The following recipients received their award at a special event, held at the Graduate Research School in December 2016.
