MDHS ECR Network Symposium 2020 Award

Congratulations to Natasha de Alwis who was recently awarded the best “Oral Presentation – Long Talk” and “2020 MDHS Faculty ECR Award” at the 2020 MDHS ECR Network Symposium.

Natasha is a third year PhD student supervised by A/Prof Natalie Hannan. She completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne majoring in Microbiology and Immunology. In her Honours year, she moved to pregnancy research, studying hypoxia-induced gene expression changes in the placenta. Being part of the Therapeutics Discovery and Vascular Function in Pregnancy Group, her PhD focuses on assessing candidate therapeutics for preeclampsia in human and animal models. Her research features an ex vivo technique called wire myography, by which she can assess the vascular reactivity of small resistance vessels, and their functional response to candidate therapeutics. Key technical skills of the applicant: Mouse breeding, handling, and blood pressure measurements. Vascular dissection, wire myography, qPCR, cell culture technique.

The Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences (MDHS) Early Career Researcher (ECR) Network is an ECR-led committee that supports early-mid career researchers within the Faculty of MDHS, the symposium is held yearly, for more information please visit the webpage.