Griffith University’s leading researchers have been recognised at the 2019 Vice Chancellor’s Research Excellence Awards.

Vice Chancellor and President Professor Carolyn Evans congratulated all researchers nominated for the prestigious awards.

The awards were presented by Vice Chancellor and President Professor Evans and Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) Professor Andrea Bishop at the Nathan campus ceremony.

The full list of 2019 winners:

Excellence in Research Leadership

Professor Hamish McCallum is internationally recognised for his work on infectious diseases in free ranging wildlife and was last night honoured for his contribution with the Excellence in Research Leadership award.

Professor McCallum’s core research area is disease ecology — which takes the principals of ecology and applies them to managing and understanding infectious diseases within humans and wildlife.

Professor Hamish McCallum

Since taking up the helm as Head of School of Environment nearly a decade ago, Professor McCallum has developed an extensive research program investigating infectious diseases in conservation biology and in zoonotic infections. Professor McCallum led an international Hendra virus program project funded from 2012-2016 and is the lead researcher into Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease since 2006.

Professor McCallum heads up the research theme Planetary Health within the Environmental Futures Research Institute and also successfully developed a US National Science Foundation grant, of which the project gains an understanding of the evolution of cancer.

Excellence in an Early Career Researcher

The Excellence in an Early Career Researcher cements Dr Lee Morgenbesser’s reputation as one of Australia’s leading young political scientists.

Dr Lee Morgenbesser receives his Early Career Research Award.

Appointed as a research fellow with Griffith Asia Institute and the Centre for Governance and Public Policy in 2014, Dr Morgenbesser published his first book-length comparative analysis on why authoritarian regimes hold elections in 2016.

In 2018, he began his current position as an ARC Discovery Early Career Award where he published a further four journal articles and presented at 12 invited talks and one conference, and also won the Griffith Business School Research Excellence Award for the Early Career Researcher.

Excellence of an Individual Mid-Career Researcher

The high-calibreof mid-career researchers meant not one, but two awards were given out for the category of Individual Mid-Career Researcher.

Associate Professor Tara McGee of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice was recognised for her research into the development of offending over the life-course, as well as developmental crime prevention.

Her greatest contribution is to the understanding of the development of antisocial behavior and offending over the lifetime and her research was the first to show many people who are first detected by the criminal justice system as adults have offended previously without being caught.

Associate Professor Jun Zhuo and Associate Professor Tara McGee receive their Mid Career Research Awards.

With more than 100 papers published over five years, Associate Professor Jun Zhou of the School of Information and Communication Technology, was also presented the Excellence of an Individual Mid-Career Researcher award.

Associate Professor Zhou is a leading researcher in hyperspectral imaging, pattern recognition and machine learning that can be used in agriculture, medicine and environmental monitoring.

The research contributes to tasks such as monitoring the growth stage of bay lobsters and early crop disease detection. He is chief investigator on the ARC Linkage Project on “Precise recognition for automated harvesting and grading of strawberries.”

Excellence in Research Supervision

Griffith Business School‘s Professor Seroja Selvanathan has been recognized for her outstanding support as a supervisor with the Excellence in Research Supervision award.

She has not only supervised seven PhD completions in the last four years, but meets weekly with PhD students, encouraging and assisting them to present their work at both national and international conferences and publishing in high quality journals.

Professor Selvanathan is a Higher Degree Research (HDR) convenor and has organized symposiums, helped junior academic staff take on co-supervision with accredited staff and organized a Statistics and Research Design Support training for HDR students.

Professor Seroja Selvanathan receives the Research Supervision Award.

Excellence of a Research Group or Team

The Alliance for Vascular Access Teaching and Research (AVATAR) team took out the award for Excellence of a Research Group or Team for their work in the science of accessing the veins and arteries for medical treatment.

Team members include Professor Claire Rickard, Professor Marie Cooke, Associate Professor Andrew Bulmer, Dr Amanda Ullman, Mrs Nicole Marsh, Ms Tricia Kleidon, Associate Professor Josh Byrnes, Dr Gillian Ray-Barruel and Ms Jessica Schults.

Between 25-50 per cent of devices used to access veins and arteries for medical treatment fail annually from complications such as infection, vein damage and accident dislodgement.

AVATAR’s vision is to make vascular access complications history by eliminating ineffective healthcare practices and replace them innovative solutions, in turn providing patients with better healthcare and saving healthcare providers billions of dollars.

Alliance for Vascular Access Teaching and Research Award – Menzies Health Institute of Queensland.