The best and brightest young UQ researchers and postgraduate students are making their marks on the national and international academic stage.
A strong commitment to postgraduate education at UQ is delivering both significant research outcomes and national and international awards for students.
PhD students undertaking research into subjects as diverse as international nuclear relations, cancer cures, the optimal use of the waters of the Nile River and futuristic forms of light metals have been recognised this year.
- Eliza Matthews will finish her PhD research in the US after winning
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| Ms Eliza Matthews |
a Fulbright Postgraduate Award worth almost $40,000 for one year’s study.
Her thesis, through UQ’s School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, is on American nuclear relations with India, Pakistan and Israel between 1968 and 1995.
In the US, she hopes to interview important policy makers from that era including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former secretaries of defence, national security advisers and past presidents.
She will be based at George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian studies which is next door to the White House in Washington DC.
“Many diplomats and media commentators have criticised the US, saying it acted inconsistently in its overthrow of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in Iraq on the one hand, but acquiesed on the issue of Israel and its opaque nuclear status on the other,” Ms Matthews said.
The 24-year-old is one of the few humanities scholars to have won Fulbright scholarships in Australia.
- Science student David Bryant received Cure Cancer Australia’s Young Researcher of the Year PhD student award.
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| Mr David Bryant |
Mr Bryant earned the $5000 prize for his PhD in molecular cell biology at UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) studying the movement of cancer cells (metastasis) in the breast.
“We’re trying to understand why, when a tumour arises in the breast, it doesn’t simply stay there. Why does it move somewhere else in the body?” Mr Bryant said.
He said a key piece of the puzzle was to understand how cells stuck to each other, even when they were growing and dividing.
Mr Bryant said this was important because many cancer patients died from a secondary cancer that had moved from the breast.
The 23-year-old started at UQ as an undergraduate science student, finished his honours in science and won the biochemistry alumni prize before starting his PhD at the IMB.
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| Dr Kefyalew Mekonnen |
- Ethiopian-born student Kefyalew Mekonnen, who studied in the School of Natural and Rural Systems Management and graduated in economics, won the 2004 prize for PhD research from the Australian Agricultural and Resources Economics Society.
His thesis investigated the economics of building small water storages in the upper Nile basin, the world’s longest river, which flows from Ethiopia through Sudan and Egypt.
Dr Mekonnen, who spent nine years working in the Nile basin on engineering and environmental projects, said drip irrigation could save up to 48 percent of the water potentially used to irrigate small areas of cereal, vegetable and traditional crops on a typical Ethiopian farm and improve farm productivity, earnings, and family livelihoods.
The majority of the Nile originates in Ethiopia but more than 97 percent of its annual flow of 84 million megalitres is used by downstream countries.
“Water resources of the Nile River basin are not only scarce but also shared among several countries and have the potential to become a major source of conflict,”
Dr Mekonnen said.
In his thesis, Dr Mekonnen detailed the likely costs of building dams, weirs and irrigation, calculated water consumption per crop and analysed new ways of water harvesting, storage, and delivery to fields.
- Research by PhD student Andrew Blake is helping shape the materials of the future.
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| Mr Andrew Blake |
Mr Blake, who is in the final year of his PhD studies in the School of Engineering, attended The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) annual meeting in San Francisco where he took out the award for Best Student Paper.
His research has provided a clearer picture of the hardening and softening effects of magnesium when high concentrations of aluminium and zinc are added.
It could open the door to new alloys for use in industry for a range of machines such as automobiles.
The paper was the result of a collaboration between Mr Blake and his supervisor, Associate Professor Carlos Cáceres.
