Professor Matthew Watt, Head of the Department of Physiology (School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Melbourne) has recently been featured across Australian media for his involvement in discovering a new therapy for prostate cancer.

Last week, former Head of Physiology (1984-1995) Emeritus Professor Trefor Owen Morgan was awarded the Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to medicine, and to medical research in the physiological sciences, particularly in relation to hypertension.

Dr Kate Murphy (Dept. Physiology, Centre for Muscle Research) has led a long-term study on the therapeutic potential of Mas receptor (MasR) activation for cancer and other serious muscle wasting conditions.

Dr Justin Hardee (Physiology) has been awarded the University of Melbourne's prestigious McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship. The fellowship provides salary support for three years (2019-2021) with additional funds to support project costs. Dr Hardee will investigate the therapeutic potential of slow muscle programming in health and disease, through an NHMRC-supported research project with mentor Professor Gordon Lynch in the Department of Physiology's Centre for Muscle Research.

Francesca Alves (PhD student, Centre for Muscle Research) was selected for a Cold Spring Harbor fellowship for receiving Second Prize for her short talk on 'Iron accumulation in mouse models of Duchenne muscular dystrophy'.

Professor Andrew Allen (Physiology) has been awarded the 2018 Paxinos-Watson Award for the paper Excessive Respiratory Modulation of Blood Pressure Triggers Hypertension.

Our Facebook Live Chat event for prospective Bachelor of Biomedicine students has achieved tremendous success. Since the live stream aired last Wednesday evening, the Biomed Chat has reached an audience of 21.9K, receiving 15K views.Bachelor of Biomedicine graduate Philip Qian and Dr Rose McCarty (Anatomy & Neuroscience; Pharmacology & Therapeutics) discussed everything students need to know about studying Biomed in 2019.

The NHMRC Project Grants have been formally announced. Our School has been awarded a total of 26 grants, making up for more than a third of the grants awarded by the NHMRC to researchers from the University.Please join us in congratulating the following School members on their successful grants. Special mentions to Professor Katherine Kedzierska for receiving two ARC Discovery Projects and Professor Matthew Watt for receiving two NHMRC Project Grants.

PhD students Simon Wells and Eleia Chan have achieved great success at the recent Australian Physiological Society Meeting in Sydney.

Professor Stephen Harrap was presented with the Inaugural Paul Korner Senior Scientist in High Blood Pressure Research Award at last week’s High Blood Pressure Research Council’s Annual Scientific Meeting in Adelaide.

Congratulations to Dr Angelina Fong and Dr Charles Sevigny for their well deserved funding success for 2018 Learning and Teaching Initiatives grants.

Congratulations to Associate Professor Enzo Porrello (Dept. Physiology) who has received a $50,000 Metcalf Prize from the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia in recognition of his leadership in stem cell research. Enzo’s research work explores newborn heart development to develop heart attack drugs and engineer ‘artificial pumps’ from patient stem cells.

Congratulations to the following Physiology staff who are recipients of ARC Discovery Projects grants in 2019:

Dr Charles Sevigny appointed Academic Fellow Digital Learning.

Congratulations to Professor Gordon Lynch (Dept. Physiology) with Dr Kristy Swiderski and Dr René Koopman for their international grant success from the Duchenne Parent Project Netherlands.

Professor David Williams (Dept. Physiology) will become a member of the Australian Academy of Science's National Committee for Biomedical Sciences (NCBMS).

The Department of Physiology's Virtual Reality Learning Studio (VRLS) featured on channel ELEVEN's (Network Ten) children's science program Scope (S04E58). The episode aired on Sunday 22 July 2018.

Our congratulations to Professor Mary Wlodek (Department of Physiology), Associate Professor Paul Soeding (Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics and their colleagues from Deakin and Monash Universities whose recent research features in the New York Times

Our warmest congratulations to Professor Mary Wlodek and her colleagues on the publication of their invited review in the current issue of Nature

Ongoing research of the newly appointed Head of Department of Physiology, Professor Matthew Watt, was recently featured (12 January) on the Diabetes Australia Facebook page.

The Department of Physiology wishes to congratulate Dr Wendy Ip and Dr Chancal Chandramouli on the successful completion of their PhD’s.

Our congratulations to Charles on receiving this award and being selected as the University's nominee for the Australian Awards for Teaching Excellence

The Department of Physiology wishes to congratulate Dr Jean Cheong on the successful completion of her PhD

This is a great result for these two Departments in the School and their staff are to be congratulated on this outcome

The Department of Physiology, in association with its collaborators, has again enjoyed success in obtaining competitive project grant funding from the NHMRC, ARC, DART, Cancer Council of Victoria and NIH.

Congratulations to Professor Andrew Allen and his lead co-author, Dr Clement Menuet, on the acceptance of their paper for publication by Cell Metabolism

September 7th 2016, is the annual World Duchenne Awareness Day, and the University of Melbourne will light up the Cultural Rubble on Swanston Street in red to raise awareness of the condition.

Our congratulations to Hai and Gabe on their achievements.

University of Melbourne researchers have teamed up with industry to explore the genetics underlying the relationship between autism and changes to the gut.

Savant Thakur recipient of The Lionel Murphy Endowment Postgraduate Scholarship!

Our congratulations to Deanne on securing this Grant for her research.

Low birth weight or stress during pregnancy can lead to long-term health problems in women.

Congratulations Savant! You are an inspiration to us all!! Savant is a PhD student in the Department of Physiology, School of Biomedical Sciences, who is researching his own condition - Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

We wish Elisa every success for the coming year as a MDHS Research Fellow.

This is the premier journal in the stem cell field with a current impact factor of 22.27.

For the fourth year running, the Residential Indigenous Science Experience (RISE) was held at the University of Melbourne recently.

For the NHMRC, the Department had a 33% (5/15) success rate. For the ARC, the success rate was 25% (1/4).

Tahnee, a final year PhD student from Physiology, won the award at the 44th European Muscle Conference held in Warsaw, Poland, 21 - 25 September.

Three seminars that will provide alternative ideas for career pathways in the Health Sciences: When: 20 – 23 OctoberWhere: Basement Theatre in the new Architecture Building.Hosted by Dr Charles Sevigny and Prof David Williams (Department of Physiology)

Our congratulations to Hanneke Raaijmakers, Brendan Ma and Sarah Heywood, post graduate students in Professor Lea Delbridge's Cardiac Phenomics Lab, who won awards for their presentations at the recent meeting of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Congratulations to Ph.D. student, Hai Ly, for winning the Best Speaker award for a 2nd year Ph.D. student at the 6th annual Australian Society for Medical Research Victorian Student Research Symposium (as part of ASMR's Medical Research Week). His presentation was entitled: 'Metabolism regulates cell fate and the rate of asymmetric division in skeletal muscle stem cells'

Congratulations to Dr Charles Sevigny and Prof David A. Williams on securing a $30,000 University of Melbourne Learning and Teaching Initiatives grant for the 'Development of interactive online learning modules for lecture preparation and revision'.

Congratulations to Department of Physiology honours student, Alex Webster, on being selected to receive a Frances Elizabeth Thomson Trust Scholarship. This scholarship is offered to highly-ranked full-time students enrolled in an MDHS Honours program in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne who have achieved outstanding academic results! The scholarship is worth $5000.

Congratulations to Jean Ni Cheong who was awarded the DOHaD Society Prize for Collaborative Research for her poster presentation: 'Maternal low birth weight and stress alters F2 male but not female steroidogenic gene expression' at the DOHaD ANZ (Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, Australia and New Zealand) Conference 17-19th April 2015 in Melbourne.

Congratulations to Ph.D. student, Savant Thakur, for winning the June Opie Fellowship from The University of Auckland valued at NZ $12,000. This award, available to citizens of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, is the first Fellowship of its kind in the world, with the principal purpose being the pursuit of excellence. It is for students of high academic achievement with a severe disability enrolled in graduate study with a view to prepare them for a role in university teaching and research and as an ambassador for disability issues.

It is very pleasing to be able to kick-off the good news stories for 2015 with the major publication success of Dr James Ryall who has published recently in the prestigious journal Cell Stem Cell (impact factor: 22.151).The original work titled "The NAD+-Dependent SIRT1 Deacetylase Translates a Metabolic Switch into Regulatory Epigenetics in Skeletal Muscle Stem Cells", represents a major advance for our understanding of how metabolic cues translate to epigenetic modifications that regulate muscle stem cell biology. This outstanding body of research was largely conducted at the National Institutes of Health where James undertook his postdoctoral training while a NHMRC CJ Martin Research Fellow.James is leading this research on muscle stem cells in our Department and we wish him continued success, especially after the big win in last year's round of ARC Discovery-Project grants.Congratulations James!