2020 EMCRA Collaborative Award: Winners

Our congratulations to the EMCRA (Early-Mid Career Researchers Association) Collaborative Award Winners for 2020

It is with great pleasure that we announce the winners of the 2020 SBS-EMCRA (Early-Mid Career Researchers Association) Collaborative Award. This seed funding was established to promote collaboration between Level A & B postdocs in the School of Biomedical Sciences. Each application was required to have 2-3 postdocs from at least two different departments in the School, on a project of their own devising.

Despite the considerable disruptions this year, we received 13 eligible applications from a total of 26 applicants. The applications were of incredible quality, reflecting the exceptional talent of the postdocs in our School. We thank all applicants for their applications and are pleased to provide detailed feedback on each application. We are delighted to be able to award $15,000 funding to each of the following four projects.

The winners are:

Dr Jaime Foong (Department of Physiology) & Dr Andre Mu (Department of Microbiology and Immunology) for their project: “Impact of maternal antibiotics on Enteric Nervous System development”

Dr John-Paul Fuller-Jackson (Department of Anatomy & Neuroscience) & Dr Justin Hardee (Department of Physiology) for their project: “3D visualisation of the neuromuscular interface in mouse models of muscular dystrophy”

Dr Kathryn Munro (Department of Anatomy & Neuroscience) & Dr Lou Fourriere (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) for their project: “Neuronal trafficking of Sez6 and the Alzheimer’s disease protease BACE1”

Dr Hamid Soleimaninejad (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) & Dr Hamish McWilliam (Department of Microbiology and Immunology) for their project: “A hybrid spatio-temporal microscopy method to investigate protein trafficking”

This year we were also able to provide a runner-up award to the value of $6,500 to:

Dr James Hilton (Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics) & Dr Ruslan Pustovit (Department of Anatomy & Neuroscience) for their project: “Elucidating CNS pathology driving bowel dysfunction in multiple sclerosis”

Congratulations to the winners, and thank-you again to everyone who submitted an application.

To stay on top of EMCRA’s activities, follow us on Twitter (@sbsemcra) or Facebook (facebook.com/sbsemcra), or email us at sbs-emcra@unimelb.edu.au.

Regards,

Jeff, Claire, Pin Shie and Mariana

2020 EMCRA Co-chairs, on behalf of the 2020 EMCRA steering committee