Although the year has just begun, there are already some great opportunities for scientists, with nominations opening for the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science and for Fresh Science, a media boot camp and competition for early-career researchers.

In the next few months, the L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand For Women in Science Fellowships will be hunting for three more outstanding women scientists, and the AIPS will award the biennial CSL Florey Medal to a leading figure in Australian science.

We’re also helping with some interesting events coming up early in the New Year, including the Graham Clark Oration and the launch of the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia.

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Fresh Science takes young researchers with no media experience and turns them into spokespeople for science.

More than 60 early-career researchers get a taste of life in the limelight, with a day of media training and a public event in their home state.

Then we throw the media spotlight on 12 of the best and brightest young scientists, putting them through a four-day media bootcamp in Melbourne.

Nominations are now open and close 5pm, Friday 1 March 2013.

Read on for more information, or jump straight to the nomination page.

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Fresh Science takes young researchers with no media experience and turns them into spokespeople for science.

More than 60 early-career researchers get a taste of life in the limelight, with a day of media training and a public event in their home state.

Then we throw the media spotlight on 12 of the best and brightest young scientists, putting them through a four-day media bootcamp in Melbourne.

Nominations are now open and close 5pm, Friday 1 March 2013.

Read on for more information, or jump straight to the nomination page.

We’re looking for:

• early-career researchers (from honours students to no more than five years post-PhD)
• a peer-reviewed discovery which has had little or no media coverage
• some ability to present ideas in everyday English
• from absolutely any field of science

State finalists will meet journalists and learn essential communication skills in a one day media training course, followed by a public event where they’ll get to practice their new skills.

Then, the 12 best candidates from the state finals will head to Melbourne for the Fresh Science national final – an intense four-day media boot camp, where they’ll present their work to the media, meet government and science leaders, explain their work over a beer with strangers and try to inspire a room full of schoolkids with their science.

Last year’s Fresh Science national finalists were featured in more than 400 news stories on TV and radio, in print and online. You can stories about past Fresh Scientists at: www.freshscience.org.au

Now in its 16th year, Fresh Science is supported by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science, Research and Tertiary Education through the Inspiring Australia initiative, CSL Limited and Museum Victoria.

Ready to apply? Click through for details of how to nominate.

EMBL Australia will launch a third node at the new South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.

And “new knowledge, ideas and a feeling of inspiration”, as EMBL Australia supports a group of PhD students to travel to the main EMBL campus in Heidelberg, Germany.

Also in this new year bulletin: more travel grants and internships for PhD students; EMBL alumni making connections with Europe; and congratulating Victoria Prize winner Terry Speed.

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Congratulations to the 2013 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureates; meet Fiona Stanley, Susan Greenfield and Marita Cheng and discuss their journeys in science; travel and recognition for the 2012 Australia and NZ Fellows; Nature says their publications don’t celebrate women in science enough; an Emmy for Immortal, a documentary about Elizabeth Blackburn.

The winner of the Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize will be announced at 12.30 pm, Thursday 15 November 2012, at a lunch at UBS in Sydney.

He will receive $25,000, and a glass trophy designed by Australian sculptor Nick Mount.

The 2012 finalists are:

• Robert McLaughlin, a medical engineer from the University of Western Australia (UWA), who has developed an optical probe that fits inside a hypodermic needle and can help surgeons accurately determine the boundaries of breast cancer tumours.
• Marc Pellegrini, from Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), whose discoveries about how the body regulates its immune system are being applied to clinical trials of cancer vaccines and treatments for HIV and hepatitis.
• Jian Yang, from the Diamantina Institute at the University of Queensland, who has solved a major puzzle of missing heritability by developing software and methods to determine the multiple genes involved in conditions such as schizophrenia, obesity and diabetes.

9 November 2012

Bryan Simms and his son Robert disappeared while flying over Mozambique on 28 October. [continue reading…]

Nirajan Shiwakoti claims his prize for best science limerick. Credit: Thami Croeser

How do you interpretively dance video game addiction?

What rhymes with galaxies?

Describe milk without saying cow?

This is what we made the freshies do at Fresh Science at the Pub 2012. [continue reading…]

Grab a beer and meet a dozen bright sparks at Fresh Science at the Pub after work on Monday 15 October.

You’ll hear about growing galaxies and building spaceships, arthritis in your gums and gaming addictions. [continue reading…]