In this bulletin:
- 2010 Laureates announced
- Two former Laureates win Nobel Prizes in Medicine and Chemistry
- Prime Minister recognises L’Oréal Fellow with physical sciences prize
- Updates from our 2007 and 2008 Australian Fellows – Tara Telescope in business, and more
- Applying for Australian Fellowships for 2010
International Laureates announced
The winners of the 2010 L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Awards were announced on 14 October 2009.
The five Laureates are:
- Africa & the Arab States: Rashika El Ridi, Professor at Cairo University in Egypt, for paving the way towards the development of a vaccine against the tropical disease Schistomiasis/Bilharzia.
- Asia-Pacific: Lourdes J. Cruz, Professor at the Marine Science Institute at the University of the Philippines Diliman in the Philippines, for the discovery of marine snail toxins that can serve as powerful tools to study brain function.
- North America: Elaine Fuchs, Professor at The Rockefeller University in the United States, for her contributions to our knowledge of skin biology and skin stem cells.
- Europe: Anne Dejean-Assémat, Professor at the Pasteur Institute in France, for her contributions to our understanding of leukaemia and liver cancers.
- Latin America: Alejandra Bravo, Professor at the Institute of Molecular Microbiology of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma in Mexico, for her work on a bacterial toxin that acts as a powerful insecticide.
The Laureates will receive their awards, which will include a US$100,000 prize, on 4 March, 2010 at a ceremony in Paris.
They were chosen from nominations made by a network of almost 1000 members of the international scientific community. A jury of 18 eminent scientists led by Professor Günter Blobel, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1999, selected the final winners from the shortlisted applicants.
Professor Blobel said: “For a dozen years, the L’Oréal-UNESCO Awards have recognized and promoted exceptional women who, by the excellence of their research, contribute to the advancement of science. As we announce the laureates of the 2010 Awards, we are very proud to note that two laureates of the 2008 Awards will receive 2009 Nobel Prizes. The L’Oréal-UNESCO Awards laureates are among world’s best scientific talents and will serve as role models for the future of science.”
For more L’Oréal Laureate information: http://www.forwomeninscience.com
2008 L’Oréal Laureates win Nobel Prizes in Medicine and Chemistry
Two former L’Oréal Laureates have won 2009 Nobel Prizes.
Australian-born US scientist Elizabeth Blackburn shares the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine with fellow US researchers Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.”
From the official announcement:
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have solved a major problem in biology: how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes – the telomeres – and in an enzyme that forms them – telomerase.
The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.
Elizabeth was awarded the 2008 L’Oréal-UNESCO Prize For Women in Science for North America.
And Israeli scientist Ada Yonath shares the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with UK researcher Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and US researcher Thomas A. Steitz “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.”
From the official announcement:
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 awards studies of one of life’s core processes: the ribosome’s translation of DNA information into life. Ribosomes produce proteins, which in turn control the chemistry in all living organisms. As ribosomes are crucial to life, they are also a major target for new antibiotics.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry awards Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. All three have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.
Ada was awarded the 2008 L’Oréal-UNESCO Prize For Women in Science for Europe.
More information on the Nobel Prizes and their winners can be found at
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/ and
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2009/index.html.
And for L’Oréal Laureate information: http://www.forwomeninscience.com
Prime Minister recognises L’Oréal Fellow
2008 Fellow Amanda Barnard has won the 2009 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year for her work on modelling and predicting the shape, structure and stability of nanoparticles under different environmental conditions.
The AUD$50,000 prize is one of the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science.
Amanda Barnard hopes to predict which nanoparticles will work most efficiently and which could be dangerous. Using supercomputers, she’s making the particles in the virtual world and testing how they interact in various environments before they get made in the real world. Her peers told her it couldn’t be done. But this young scientist proved them wrong and now leads the world in her field of nanomorphology—predicting the shape, structure and stability of nanoparticles.
Amanda’s work as the head of the CSIRO Virtual Nanoscience Laboratory, where she moved earlier this year, has focused on a variety of nanoparticles including the titanium dioxide particles found in photovoltaics in solar cells, sunscreens, and on self-cleaning surfaces; metal nanoparticle fuel catalysts; and diamond nanoparticles as delivery vehicles for chemotherapy. She has published several papers this year and has received a number of other awards and honours including the Mercedes-Benz Environmental Research Award from the Banksia Foundation.
Updates from Australian Fellows
Our three new Fellows are getting to work after receiving their Fellowships in late August. And the 2008 Fellows have completed their Fellowships and handed in their final reports to L’Oréal Australia.
Natalie Borg (2008) has successfully crystallised one domain from her DUBLIN protein, now renamed the Mitochondrial Ubiquitin Ligase activator of NFκB, or MUL1. The domain has some unexpected characteristics which have led her research down new paths, and she expects to publish her initial findings in the near future. Efforts to crystallise the other two domains of the protein are continuing. Natalie says the award has helped her to establish herself as an independent research scientist, and given her the results she needs to apply for an NHMRC Project grant.
Erika Cretney (2008) has made significant progress in understanding how Blimp-1 expression plays a role in the function of T regulatory cells and has presented her results at a number of conferences over the course of the year. A paper describing her research results has recently been submitted for publication. Erika has also found herself in a new role advocating for female scientists at WEHI, which is actively looking at ways to address the gender gap in science.
Angela Moles (2008) says she has had a successful and productive year, with the funding provided by her Fellowship directly contributing to a substantial increase in her research output through the funding of research assistants and the purchase of a new spectrometer. She has two new students working with her—an Honours student, Alicia Bohnen, who has been working in the lab this year as a research assistant, and a PhD student, Ray Blick, who is working on mimicry in mistletoe. Ray and Angela have commenced a new study looking at whether birds, flowers, butterflies and fish are more colourful in the tropics than in more temperate geographical locations. Angela has recently been promoted to Assistant Professor at the University of New South Wales.
Ilana Feain (2007) says the telescope at Sydney girls’ high school Tara is now up and running with a CCD camera, and staff and students are learning the ropes. A purpose-built spectrograph will be installed in the near future and next year all four of the telescopes, located in Australia, Chile, South Africa and India will be commissioned, and the Global Jet Watch program’s research will begin in earnest.
Sarah Pryke (2007) received a lot of international publicity earlier this year for her Science paper about the sex determination of Gouldian finches.
L’Oréal Australia Fellowships in 2010
L’Oréal Australia will offer three fellowships in 2010 valued at $20,000 each.
The same process will be followed as in 2009. All applicants will complete an online application. They will not have to collect references. Instead, we will contact only the referees of shortlisted applicants and seek closed references. We anticipate opening applications in April 2010 for one month. Shortlisted applicants will be notified by email in mid-May and will have two weeks to send in supporting materials. The judges will make their final decision by mid-July and winners will be announced in late August.
More details will be provided in March 2010.
