Each month, the school awards a Paper of the Month prize to an academic who has published a paper in a journal with the highest impact factor (IF) of all the submissions for that month. To be eligible, the paper must have an IF =/>3, and the submitting academic must be the first or the corresponding author for the paper.
Winners
This award recognises the expertise, work and research that goes into carrying out and publishing academic papers. Read our winning papers and the impact our research has on solving complex problems.
2025
- September: Prof John Mattick – ‘The emerging roles of long noncoding RNAs in the nervous system’, published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience (IF 26.7).
- August: A/Prof Jai Tree – ‘The type 6 secretion system immunity protein RhsFI has been repurposed for small RNA regulation in pathogenic Escherichia coli’, published in Nucleic Acids Research (IF 16.8) AND Prof Martin Smith – ‘ECSFinder: optimized prediction of evolutionarily conserved RNA secondary structures from genome sequences’, also published in Nucleic Acids Research (IF 16.8).
- July: Prof Merlin Crossley – ‘Removal of promoter CpG methylation by epigenome editing reverses HBG silencing’, published in Nature Communications (IF 15.7).
- June: A/Prof Jai Tree – ‘What makes a small RNA work?’, published in Nucleic Acids Research (IF 16.8).
- May: no entries submitted
- April: Prof Marc Wilkins – ‘SMYD5 is a ribosomal methyltransferase that trimethylates RPL40 lysine 22 through recognition of a KXY motif’, published in Cell Reports (IF 7.5).
- March: Dr Frances Byrne – ‘Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of naphthalene-1,4-dione analogues as anticancer agents’, published in RSC Medicinal Chemistry (IF 4).
- February: Dr Emily Oates – ‘Post-transcriptional regulation supports the homeostatic expression of mature RNA’, published in Briefings in Bioinformatics (IF 6.8).
- January: Dr Emily Oates – 'Congenital Titinopathy: Comprehensive Characterization of the Most Severe End of the Disease Spectrum', published in Annals of Neurology (IF 8.1).
2024
- December: Prof Belinda Ferrari – ‘Fine-scale landscape heterogeneity drives microbial community structure at Robinson Ridge, East Antarctica’, published in Science of the Total Environment (IF 8.2).
- November: Prof Mark Tanaka – 'How cultural innovations trigger the emergence of new pathogens’, published in PNAS (IF 9.4).
- October: Prof Ruiting Lan – ‘Genomic evidence of two-staged transmission of the early seventh cholera pandemic’, published in Nature Communications (IF 14.7).
- September: A/Prof Paul Waters – ‘Imprinted X chromosome inactivation in marsupials: The paternal X arrives at the egg with a silent DNA methylation profile’, published in PNAS (IF 9.4).
- August: Dr Megan Lenardon – ‘A synthetic peptide mimic kills Candida albicans and synergistically prevents infection’, published in Nature Communications (IF 14.7).
- July: Dr Joshua Hamm – ‘The parasitic lifestyle of an archaeal symbiont’, published in Nature Communications (IF 14.7).
- June: no entries submitted
- May: no entries submitted
- April: A/Prof Chris Marquis – ‘Tyrosine – A Structural Glue for Hierarchical Protein Assembly’, published in Trends in Biochemical Sciences (IF 13.8).
- March: Prof Belinda Ferrari – ‘Urea amendment decouples nitrification in hydrocarbon contaminated Antarctic soil’, published in Chemosphere (IF 8.8).
- February: A/Prof Fatemeh Vafaee – ‘A Review on Graph Neural Networks for Predicting Synergistic Drug Combinations’, published in Artificial Intelligence Review (IF 12).
- January: Prof Marc Wilkins – ‘Taking Me away: the function of phosphorylation on histone lysine demethylases’, published in Trends in Biochemical Sciences (IF 13.8).
2023
- December: Prof Ruiting Lan – ‘Genomic epidemiology and multilevel genome typing of Bordetella pertussis’, published in Emerging Microbes and Infections (IF 13.2).
- November: Prof Belinda Ferrari – ‘Clearing the air: unraveling past and guiding future research in atmospheric chemosynthesis’, published in Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews (IF 12.9).
- October: A/Prof Fatemeh Vafaee – ‘BloodChIP Xtra: an expanded database of comparative genome-wide transcription factor binding and gene-expression profiles in healthy human stem/progenitor subsets and leukemic cells’, published in Nucleic Acids Research (IF 14.9).
- September: no entries submitted
- August: Prof Ruiting Lan – ‘Integrating proteomic data with metabolic modeling provides insight into key pathways of Bordetella pertussis biofilms’, published in Frontiers in Microbiology (IF 5.2).
- July: A/Prof Vladimir Sytnyk – ‘Deficiency in the neural cell adhesion molecule 2 (NCAM2) reduces axonal levels of beta-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1), affects axonal organization in the hippocampus, and leads to behavioral deficits.’, published in Cerebral Cortex (IF 3.7).
- June: Prof Belinda Ferrari – ‘Utilization of—Omic technologies in cold climate hydrocarbon bioremediation: a text-mining approach’, published in Frontiers in Microbiology (IF 5.2).
- May: Prof Rob Yang – ‘Lipid droplet biogenesis and functions in health and disease’, published in Nature Reviews Endocrinology (IF 47.766).
- April: Prof Marc Wilkins – ‘Cross-linking mass spectrometry discovers, evaluates, and corroborates structures and protein–protein interactions in the human cell’, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (IF 12.779).
- March: Prof Marc Wilkins – ‘Evidence for a putative isoprene reductase in Acetobacterium wieringae’, published in mSystems (IF 7.328).
- February: A/Prof Tatyana Chtanova – ‘Neutrophil conversion to a tumor-killing phenotype underpins effective microbial therapy’, published in Cancer Research, (IF 13.312).
- January: Prof John Mattick – ‘Long non-coding RNAs: Definitions, functions, challenges and recommendations’, published in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology (IF 113.915).