NHMRC awards for excellence

Twenty researchers have been recognised by this year’s NHMRC’s Research Excellence Awards.

Presented at an award dinner by Federal Minister for Health Peter Dutton, the awards acknowledge the top-ranked applicants across NHMRC funding schemes.

They include some special categories such as the Marshall and Warren Award, which acknowledges the most innovative and potentially transformative research project in NHMRC’s Project Grants scheme.

This year also includes the inaugural NHMRC Rising Star Research Excellence Award, which is given to the top-ranked application by an Indigenous researcher in the NHMRC Early Career Fellowship Scheme.

The following list includes the details of the 20 winners. More information on the awardees can be found on the NHMRC website.

• Marshall and Warren Award - Professor John Mamo, Professor of Health Science and Head of the Vascular Biology Research Unit at Curtin University.
• Rising Star Research Excellence Award - Dr Sandra Campbell from James Cook University.
• Highest ranked project grant - Professor Jamie Rossjohn, an NHMRC Australia Fellow at Monash University.
• Highest ranked program grant - Professor Angel Lopez, Professor Michael Parker and Professor Timothy Hughes from the University of South Australia.
• Highest ranked research fellow - Professor Guy Marks, a respiratory physician and respiratory and environmental epidemiologist based at the Liverpool Hospital, South Western Sydney Clinical School, UNSW and at the Woolcock Institute in Sydney.
• Highest ranked practitioner fellow - Professor Jonathan Kalman from the University of Melbourne.
• Highest ranked career development fellowship, clinical - Dr Nicholas Wood from the University of Sydney.
• Highest ranked career development fellowship, clinical - Associate Professor Allen Cheng from Monash University.
• Highest ranked career development fellowship, population health - Dr Bette Liu from the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
• Highest ranked career development fellowship, population health - Associate Professor Terrence Haines, Director of the Allied Health Research Unit at Monash Health and Monash University.
• Highest ranked career development fellowship, industry - Dr Justine Gatt, Senior Research Fellow and Group Leader at the Brain Dynamics Centre at the University of Sydney Medical School.
• Highest ranked career development fellowship, biomedical - Dr Kathryn Holt from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne and the Bio21 Institute.
• Highest ranked career development fellowship, biomedical - Dr Oliver Sieber, Head of the Colorectal Cancer Genetics Laboratory at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI).
• Highest ranked development grant - Professor Mark Walker, the Director of the Australian Infectious Disease Research Centre at the University of Queensland.
• Frank Fenner Early Career Fellowship - Dr Michael Roche from the Department of Infectious Diseases at Monash University.
• Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowship, clinical 
- Professor Bronwyn Kingwell
, an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne.
• Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowship, 
public health 
- Professor Lisa Maher
 from The Kirby Institute for infection and immunity in society at UNSW.
• Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowship, biomedical
 - Professor Katharina Gaus from UNSW.
• Gustav Nossal Scholarship, biomedical 
- Mr Jia Li
 from the Centenary Institute.
• Gustav Nossal Scholarship, clinical
 - Dr Michael Low
from the WEHI.