Smart moves
 |
| Professor Ian Frazer |
The University has enthusiastically embraced the Queensland Government’s Smart State initiative and received competitive support for a wide range of innovative projects and fellowships.
UQ’s strong links with the Queensland Government have been strengthened over the past year thanks to further competitive funding through the Smart State initiative.
The accolades continued for Australian of the Year Professor Ian Frazer, who was awarded the inaugural $1.25 million Smart State Premier’s Fellowship.
The Smart State Premier’s Fellowships scheme provides funding to entice experienced and distinguished researchers of national and international prominence to lead research teams in Queensland universities, research institutes, government agencies or industry research facilities.
The Smart State strategy was established in 1998 and is focused on broadening the Queensland economy from a “rocks and crops” culture to being a scientific leader.
Professor Frazer, co-discoverer of the vaccine for cervical cancer, said the Premier’s Fellowship would allow him to further his work into effective specific immunotherapy, widely predicted to be an effective treatment for chronic viral infections and for cancer.
“This research program will pave the way for the development of further therapeutic vaccines,” Professor Frazer said.
Collaboration between UQ and microscope maker Carl Zeiss has been strengthened through another Smart State Fellowship.
Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) Research Fellow Dr John Power was awarded a $150,000 fellowship to continue research into the cellular mechanisms responsible for emotional learning in the brain.
“Living cells don’t like to be subjected to lasers, so we have to come up with new ways of mapping and observing what’s happening in the amygdala – as well as other parts of the brain,” Dr Power said.
“By working closely with Zeiss, we’ll be able to develop new systems that meet our need to capture images of live cells.”
Professor Matt Trau, Director of UQ’s Centre for Nanotechnology and Biomaterials, is leading an international alliances project awarded $2 million in Smart State funding.
The project aims to investigate and test a set of unique, Australian-owned nanotechnologies that will accelerate advances in the early detection and diagnosis of many diseases.
“By testing and developing these nanotechnology platforms, we hope to produce tools to give people an early warning that they have a serious disease,” Professor Trau said.
“That early warning could mean the difference between getting medical intervention at a time when it is easy to administer and highly effective, and facing the prospect of massive and debilitating intervention when the disease has taken hold.”
UQ is set to become a global leader in drug development, thanks to a $1.73 million grant to move medicines into the market more quickly.
The Centre for Integrated Preclinical Drug Development will use the grant to develop “new tools” for a drug development toolkit.
Centre Director Professor Maree Smith said the “toolkit” would help modernise and streamline the development pathway of new pharmaceuticals, addressing an acknowledged blockage in the drug production pipeline that is causing significant international concern.
Dr Paul Meredith, from UQ’s School of Physical Sciences and head of the Soft Condensed Matter Physics Group, was awarded a Smart State Senior Fellowship to develop new technologies to combat the world’s looming energy crisis.
“Even the most ardent environmentalist would concede that we cannot merely stop using fossil fuels to create our energy,” Dr Meredith said.
“We must solve our energy problems, and mitigate global warming, by a progressive transition from fossil fuels to alternative, sustainable energy sources.”
Professor Andrew Whittaker, of the Centre for Magnetic Resonance and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), will lead an International Biomaterials Research Alliance that has attracted $1.2 million in Smart State funding.
The Alliance brings together an international team of biomaterials synthesis experts to develop medical applications for bone repair, vascular regeneration, vision and medical imaging.
Dr Brendan O’Sullivan, from UQ’s Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research, hopes a $150,000 Smart State Fellowship will help slow skyrocketing rates of diabetes in Australia, by leading to a new treatment for Type 2 diabetes.
Dr O’Sullivan and his team are developing a drug that targets liver cells to prevent their inflammation in obesity – a common precursor to diabetes.
Dr O’Sullivan said his technique involved coating treatment drugs in absorbable fat, which formed an injectable dose that could last up to one week.
If successful, the treatment could combat other diseases such as heart disease, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, an autoimmune disease of the skin.
The Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at UQ received more than $50 million in Smart State funding.
Professor Mark Ragan from the IMB and Dr Anthony Maeder from the e-Health Research Centre received $1.9 million to establish the Queensland Facility for Advanced Bioinformatics (QFAB).
Bioinformatics is a rapidly emerging field that involves the collection, management and analysis of large amounts of biological data using networks of computers and databases.
An $800,000 Research-Industry Partnerships Program grant was awarded to the IMB and Bio-Layer Pty Ltd to foster local development and international commercialisation of new biotechnology products for the detection and treatment of human diseases.
The IMB also received $50 million in new funding announced in the State Budget, which will help support operational costs over five years to begin in 2009-10. The IMB is currently funded until 2008-2009.
