NHMRC Fellows for UNSW

18 November 2003

Two newly appointed National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Fellows at UNSW have been announced.

Professor Caroline Finch, the recently appointed director of the Injury Risk Management Research Centre, has been appointed a Principal Research Fellow, and Associate Professor Lynne Bilston of the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute (POWMRI) has been appointed a Senior Research Fellow.

Professor Finch, who has been described as Australia's leading expert on sports injury statistics, recently released a report titled Injury Costs! A Valuation of the Burden of Injury in NSW 1998-1999, which indicated that injuries are costing the NSW economy $3.6 billion a year. This report was the first of its kind to accurately measure the lifetime cost of injuries.

Professor Finch's research is to provide an evidence base for prevention activities at the community level and to use a data-driven approach to identifying injury problems. She is the inaugural Professor of Injury Risk Management at UNSW.

Professor Bilston, a senior scientist with POWMRI, conducts basic and applied biomechanical research aimed at the prevention of traumatic injury to the nervous system. She looks at mechanisms of injury to children and adults in motor vehicle crashes, and undertakes design and evaluation of vehicle restraint systems to prevent these injuries.

In the same announcement, Professor Des Richardson of the Children's Cancer Institute Australia (CCIA), has been promoted to Principal Research Fellow, and the appointment of Professor Elizabeth Burcher of the School of Medical Sciences as a Senior Principal Research Fellow has been renewed.

Professor Richardson, who is head of the CCIA's Iron Metabolism and Chelation Program, works on the development of drugs called iron chelators that can remove iron from the tissues of patients with iron-overload disease. His group has successfully identified a group of novel chelators known as the PIH analogues. His investigations with these compounds also resulted in the development of iron-binding drugs that can inhibit the growth of cancer cells.

Professor Burcher, from the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, looks at autonomic disorders underlying bladder overactivity incontinence and colonic dysfunction. Together with specialised clinical collaborators, she intends to apply a range of technologies to investigate mechanisms in normal tissue, and study receptor and neuro-chemical changes in specific diseases, using the Department's unique human tissue bank.

New Career Development Awards for biomedical research were awarded to Dr Jane Butler of the POWMRI; Dr Maria Kavallaris of the CCIA; and Dr Gilles Guillemin of the Centre for Immunology. New Career Development Awards for population health research went to Associate Professor Lisa Maher, from the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, and to Associate Professor Johanna Westbrook, from the Centre for Health Informatics.

The full list of research fellowships commencing in 2004 is available from the NHMRC website.