From left to right: Dr Chris Lear, Kelly Zhou, Victoria King.
Congratulations to Dr Chris Lear (early career category), Kelly Zhou (early PhD category) and Victoria King (Honours/Masters category) from the Fetal Physiology and Neuroscience group in the department of physiology who won prizes for their talks at the Fetal and Neonatal Workshop of Australia and New Zealand held in Queenstown last week. These workshops were organised by Dr Joanne Davidson and Dr Guido Wassink from the group, and the fellows and students are supervised by Professor Laura Bennet and Professor Alistair Gunn and Dr Joanne Davidson. The workshop is a satellite research meeting of the Paediatric Society of Australia and New Zealand congress, and it is attended by leading scientists and clinicians from throughout Australia and New Zealand.
Dr Chris Lear is also the recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis (2017) and the 2017 FMHS Doctoral Publication Excellence Prize. Chris is one of five recipients of the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis. In 2017, 432 doctoral degrees were successfully awarded. From these doctoral degrees, 19 theses were nominated by faculties with five prizes available for the very best theses. This award is a significant achievement for Chris, his supervisors Professor Laura Bennet, Professor Alistair Gunn and Dr Joanna. Davidson and his supporting team.
The 2017 FMHS Doctoral Publication Excellence Prize was awarded for Chris’ publication titled “Antenatal dexamethasone before asphyxia promotes cystic neural injury in preterm fetal sheep by inducing fetal hyperglycemia”, which was published in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. The selection committee met on 14 March 2018 to review six nominations. The committee unanimously nominated his publication as the winner of the Prize, which is the first ever awarded.