Today:
Meet the winners of this year’s Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science, worth a total of $750,000.
- Defending Australia’s snakes and lizards: Professor Richard Shine, the $250,000 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science (The University of Sydney)
- Making stock markets fair and efficient: Professor Michael Aitken, the $250,000 Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation (Capital Markets CRC/ Macquarie University)
- Creating new manufacturing jobs by replacing glass and metal with plastic: Dr Colin Hall, the inaugural $50,000 Prize for New Innovators (The University of South Australia)
- Re-engineering nature to fight for global health: Professor Richard Payne, the $50,000 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year (The University of Sydney)
- Conservation that works for government, ecosystems and people: Associate Professor Kerrie Wilson, the $50,000 Frank Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year (The University of Queensland/ ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions)
- Turning students into scientists, setting them up for jobs in mining, conservation, tourism and more: Ms Suzy Urbaniak will share the $50,000 Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools with Kent Street Senior High School, Perth
- Turning the next generation of primary teachers on to science: Mr Gary Tilley will share the $50,000 Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools with his school (Seaforth Public School, Sydney/ Macquarie University)
You can read more about them below.
They will receive their awards from the Prime Minister at a black tie dinner in the Great Hall of Parliament House tonight. The dinner will be hosted by mathematician and broadcaster Adam Spencer.
I’m in Canberra with the winners and more than happy to line up an interview with one of them for you. Just give me a call on 0417 131 977, (03) 9398 1416 or email niall@scienceinpublic.com.au
For profiles, HD videos, and photos visit: www.science.gov.au/pmscienceprizes or www.scienceinpublic.com.au/prime-ministers-prize.
Kind regards,
Richard Shine—defending Australia’s snakes and lizards
Prime Minister’s Prize for Science
Northern Australia’s peak predators—snakes and lizards—are more likely to survive the cane-toad invasion thanks to the work of Professor Richard Shine.
Using behavioural conditioning, Rick and his team have successfully protected these native predators against toad invasion in WA.
He has created traps for cane toads, taught quolls and goannas that toads are ‘bad,’ and now plans to release small cane toads ahead of the invasion front, a counterintuitive ‘genetic backburn’ based on ‘old school’ ideas that his hero Charles Darwin would have recognised.
Following in the footsteps of Darwin, Rick loves lizards and snakes.
“Some people love model trains, some people love Picasso; for me, it’s snakes.”
For his work using evolutionary principles to address conservation challenges, Professor Richard Shine from The University of Sydney will be awarded the 2016 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.
Read the full profile here: www.scienceinpublic.com.au/prime-ministers-prize/2016science
Michael Aitken—fairness underpins efficiency: the profitable innovations saving Australia billions
Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation
Global stock markets are fairer and more efficient thanks to the work of Professor Michael Aitken. Now he’s applying his information technology and markets know-how to improve health, mortgage, and other markets. He says there are billions of dollars of potential savings in health expenditure in Australia alone, that can go hand in glove with significant improvements in consumers’ health.
Michael and his team created a service that captures two million trades per second, enabling rapid analysis of markets.
Then he created the SMARTS system to detect fraud. Bought by Nasdaq Inc., it now watches over most of the world’s stock markets.
One of the companies he established to commercialise his innovations was sold for $100 million and the proceeds are supporting a new generation of researchers in the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre.
Now his team of IT researchers are taking on health and other markets with a spin-off company and large-scale R&D program that are identifying large-scale inefficiencies and fraud in Australia’s health markets.
A powerful advocate of scientific and technological innovation, Professor Michael Aitken from the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre will be awarded the 2016 Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation for creating and commercialising tools that are making markets fair and efficient.
Read the full profile here: www.scienceinpublic.com.au/prime-ministers-prize/2016innovation
Colin Hall—creating new manufacturing jobs by replacing glass and metal with plastic
Prize for New Innovators
Dr Colin Hall and his colleagues have created a new manufacturing process that will allow manufacturers to replace components made from traditional materials like glass, in cars, aircraft, spacecraft, and even whitegoods—making them lighter and more efficient.
Their first commercial success is a plastic car wing-mirror. The Ford Motor Company has already purchased more than 1.6 million mirror assemblies for use on their F-Series trucks. The mirrors are made in Adelaide by SMR Automotive and have earned $160 million in exports to date. Other manufacturers are assessing the technology. And it all started with spectacles.
Colin used his experience in the spectacle industry to solve a problem that was holding back the University of South Australia team’s development of their new technology. He developed the magic combination of five layers of materials that will bind to plastic to create a car mirror that performs as well as glass and metal, for a fraction of the weight.
For his contribution to creating a new manufacturing technology, Dr Colin Hall from the University of South Australia receives the inaugural Prize for New Innovators.
Read the full profile here: www.scienceinpublic.com.au/prime-ministers-prize/2016new-innovators
Richard Payne—re-engineering nature to fight for global health
Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year
Richard Payne makes peptides and proteins. He sees an interesting peptide or protein in nature, say in a blood-sucking tick. Then he uses chemistry to recreate and re-engineer the molecule to create powerful new drugs, such as anti-clotting agents needed to treat stroke.
His team is developing new drugs for the global challenges in health including tuberculosis (TB), malaria, and antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. They’re even developing synthetic cancer vaccines. His underlying technologies are being picked up by researchers and pharmaceutical companies around the world and are the subject of four patent applications.
For his revolutionary drug development technologies, Professor Richard Payne from The University of Sydney will be awarded the 2016 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year.
Read the full profile here: www.scienceinpublic.com.au/prime-ministers-prize/2016physical
Kerrie Wilson—conservation that works for governments, ecosystems, and people
Frank Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year
What is the value of the services that ecosystems provide—services such as clean air, water, food, and tourism? And what are the most effective ways to protect ecosystems? Where will governments get the best return on their investment in the environment? These questions are central to the work of Associate Professor Kerrie Wilson.
Kerrie can put a value on clean air, water, food, tourism, and the other benefits that forests, rivers, oceans and other ecosystems provide. And she can calculate the most effective way to protect and restore these ecosystems. Around the world she is helping governments to make smart investments in conservation.
For example, in Borneo she and her colleagues have shown how the three nations that share the island could retain half the land as forest, provide adequate habitat for the orangutan and Bornean elephant, and achieve an opportunity cost saving of over $50 billion.
In Chile, they are helping to plan national park extensions that will bring recreation and access to nature to many more Chileans, while also enhancing the conservation of native plants and animals.
On the Gold Coast, they are helping to ensure that a multi-million-dollar local government investment in rehabilitation of degraded farmland is spent wisely—in the areas where it will have the biggest impact for the natural ecosystem and local communities.
For optimising the global allocation of scarce conservation resources Associate Professor Kerrie Wilson receives the 2016 Frank Fenner Prize for Life Scientist of the Year.
Read the full profile here: www.scienceinpublic.com.au/prime-ministers-prize/2016life
Suzy Urbaniak—turning students into scientists
Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools
Geoscientist Suzy Urbaniak combined her two loves—science and education—by becoming a science teacher 30 years after finishing high school. But she couldn’t believe it when she saw how little the teaching styles had changed over the years.
“I decided then that I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to turn the classroom into a room full of young scientists, rather than students learning from textbooks,” Suzy says.
Starting out as a geoscientist, Suzy found that while she knew all the theory from school and university, she didn’t have any hands-on experience and didn’t feel as though she knew what she was doing.
She realised there needed to be a stronger connection between the classroom and what was happening in the real world, out in the field, and took this philosophy into her teaching career at Kent Street Senior High School.
“The science in my classroom is all about inquiry and investigation, giving the students the freedom to develop their own investigations and find their own solutions. I don’t believe you can really teach science from worksheets and text books.”
For her contributions to science teaching, and inspiring our next generation of scientists, Suzy Urbaniak will be awarded the 2016 Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools.
Read the full profile here: www.scienceinpublic.com.au/prime-ministers-prize/2016secondary
Gary Tilley—creating better science teachers
Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools
Gary Tilley is mentoring the next generation of science and maths teachers to improve the way these subjects are taught in the classroom.
“In over 30 years of teaching, I’ve never seen a primary school student who isn’t curious and doesn’t want to be engaged in science. Once they’re switched onto science, it helps their literacy and numeracy skills, and their investigative skills. Science is the key to the whole thing,” Gary says.
Gary recognised a long time ago that the way science was taught in primary schools needed to change. So he has taken it upon himself to mentor the younger teachers at his school, and helps train science and maths student teachers at Macquarie University through their Opening Real Science program.
At Seaforth Public School, he and his students have painted almost every wall in their school with murals of dinosaurs and marine reptiles, and created models of stars and planets, to encourage excitement and a love for science. The school is now known by local parents as the ‘Seaforth Natural History Museum’.
“Communicating science, getting children inspired with science, engaging the community and scientists themselves with science to make it a better place for the kids—that’s my passion,” Gary says.
For his contributions to science teaching, and mentoring the next generation of science teachers, Gary Tilley will be awarded the 2016 Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools.
Read the full profile here: www.scienceinpublic.com.au/prime-ministers-prize/2016primary
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