The winners of the 2014 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science are: Sam Berkovic and Ingrid Scheffer have changed the way the world thinks about epilepsy. They will receive the $300 000 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science. Their discoveries of the links between epilepsy and genes have opened the way to better targeted research, diagnosis, management and…

Sam Berkovic and Ingrid Scheffer Sam Berkovic and Ingrid Scheffer have changed the way the world thinks about epilepsy, the debilitating condition that affects about 50 million people. Twenty years ago doctors tended to regard most forms of epilepsy as acquired rather than inherited. In other words, they believed epilepsy was mostly due to injury:…

Ryan Lister Genes are not enough to explain the difference between a skin cell and a stem cell, a leaf cell and a root cell, or the complexity of the human brain. Genes don’t explain the subtle ways in which your parents’ environment before you were conceived might affect your offspring.

Matthew Hill Forty per cent of the energy consumed by industry is used to separate things—in natural gas production, mineral processing, food production, pollution control. The list is endless. Each offers an application for Matthew Hill’s crystals. He has demonstrated that the space inside metal–organic frameworks (MOFs)—the world’s most porous materials—can be used as an…

Geoff McNamara From the moment students step into ‘Mr Mac’s Lab’, they’re greeted by dinosaurs, skeletons, spacecraft and a model galaxy that hovers overhead. Their eyes can’t help but gravitate towards the huge solar system at the back of the room. No matter where they look, Geoff McNamara wants his students learn something about science—whether…

Brian Schiller At Seacliff Primary School in Adelaide’s south, Brian Schiller’s students are describing states of matter, mixing of materials, and products of chemical reactions—in Japanese. It’s just one way that Brian is creatively using science to enhance student learning in a range of curriculum areas. “Science can be a basis for teaching many different…