Griffith University has been awarded more than $4 million across four National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) fellowships, at a success rate of 18.2% (national 14.9%).
This result places Griffith 8th nationally among the university sector for the number of grants awarded and 9th overall for total NHMRC funding awarded, which is the University’s best ever result for this scheme over the four years since it commenced.
The fellowships span the Emerging Leadership and Leadership categories, highlighting the existing and developing strength of health and biomedical research at Griffith University.
Congratulations to our successful researchers:
ProfKate Seib(Institute for Glycomics) has been awarded $2,082,170 for the project titled,A comprehensive vaccine-based strategy to combat gonorrhoea.
The sexually transmitted infection gonorrhoea has a significant impact on global health, with 100 million cases/year, many of which are associated with infertility and increased HIV transmission. Due to increasing antimicrobial resistance and the absence of a vaccine, the WHO has classified gonorrhoea an urgent threat to public health that requires immediate action. Professor Seib’s research aims to develop a vaccine to prevent gonorrhoea from becoming an untreatable ‘superbug’ in the near future.
Dr Laura Diamond(Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Health Group) has been awarded $630,150 for the project titled,Smart technology for hip osteoarthritis: a personalised real-world ‘move’ into the future.
Dr Diamond will design and test a new treatment for hip osteoarthritis (OA). Dr Diamond’s team has proven that people with hip OA load their hip in a detrimental way during daily activities, and that hip load can be improved with laboratory-based movement retraining. To translate changes into everyday life, retraining must now happen in the real-world. Dr Diamond’s program will partner authentically with stakeholders to co-develop a body-worn smart device for personalised self-management in the real-world.
Dr Miaomiao Liu(Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery, Sciences Group)has been awarded $655,150 for the project titled,New method to identify disease-associated drug targets.
Dr Liu’s Fellowship aims to develop mass spectrometry-based methods to identify or characterise new targets for drug discovery. The application of the methods in target identification will allow finding of unknown protein targets for bioactive compounds and will revolutionise and dramatically accelerate the drug discovery process. Furthermore, adapting to studying membrane proteins will result in finding novel therapeutic ligands that target membrane proteins, the most important class of drug targets.
Dr Leopold Aminde(School of Medicine and Dentistry, Health Group) has been awarded $655,150 for the project titled,Estimating the health equity and productivity impacts of dietary salt reduction in people with chronic kidney disease in Australia.
Excess salt intake increases blood pressure and puts persons at risk of complications like chronic kidney disease (CKD) that kills one in ten Australians. CKD contributes to health inequalities and has a major impact on quality of life and productivity, and the future impacts in Australia are unknown. Dr Aminde’s Fellowship will evaluate long-term impacts of strategies to reduce population salt intake on CKD burden, to guide policies that improve the quality of life of all Australians.