Student Award Presentations 2017 at the MMS Departments at Parkville

High-achieving honours and graduate students were presented with awards in various categories at the annual awards evening held at Royal Melbourne Hospital on the 22nd May 2017.

Students from the Departments of Medicine and Radiology, Surgery, Psychiatry and Obstetrics and Gynaecology were eligible for the awards, with a high calibre of students being considered for all the awards.

Prizes were awarded as follows:

The Richard Larkins Prize for the Honours student with the highest grade in the Honours class of 2016 was awarded to two equally high-performing students:

  • Clarissa Whitehead, for her project ‘Evaluating the Role of FDA-Approved Therapeutics on Invadopodia Formation/Activity in Glioma Cells’.
  • Anna-Farrelly-Rosch, for her project ‘Combination therapy of valproic acid and antisense oligonucleotides to restore full length SMN protein for treatment of spinal muscular atrophy’

Department Honours Awards in recognition of excellent performance in specific departments were awarded to:

  • David Gilbert, for his project ‘Development of a novel method for HLA-B*15:02 detetion for the prevention of carbamazepine hypersensitivity reactions using isothermal loop mediated amplification’ in the Department of Medicine, RMH.
  • Sarah Thomas-Brown, for her project ‘Discovering transforming growth factor-beta driven tumorigenesis in receptor-defective colorectal cancers by exosomes’ in the Department of Surgery, SVH.
  • Shervyn Kanishka-Silvapulle, for her project ‘Understanding white matter disruptions over the course of Schizophrenia and its association with symptoms’ in the Department of Psychiatry.
  • Jessica Bahn, for her project ‘Cytokine expression profiling and function of decidual mesenchymal stem cells from ageing term placentae’ in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology

The Award for the Best Research Project in the Master of Biomedical Science was awarded to:

  • Eun Sub (Joseph) Hong, in the Department of Medicine, for his project ‘The effects of fluoxetine on the incidence and severity of epilepsy following traumatic brain injury’

Nick Christopher PhD Scholarships, in honour of the first Department of Medicine Manager, were awarded to:

  • Clarissa Whitehead, for her project ‘Evaluating the Role of FDA-Approved Therapeutics on Invadopodia Formation/Activity in Glioma Cells’.
  • Henry Zhao, for his project ‘Improving care in pre-hospital stroke’
  • Hariharan Sugumar, for his project ‘CAPLA trial: Catheter Ablation for persistent atrial fibrillation: A multicentre randomised trial for Pulmonary Vein Isolation (PVI) vs PVI with posterior Left Atrial Wall Isolation (PWI)

The Graham Brown Best Student Publication Prize was awarded to:

Thomas Oxley, for his publication entitled’ Minimally invasive endovascular stent-electrode array for high-fidelity, chronic recordings of cortical neural activity’, published in Nature Biotechnology.