The University of Queensland has attracted the largest share by a single institution of the prestigious 2003 Federation Fellowships announced today by Minister for Education, Science and Training Dr Brendan Nelson.
UQ has attracted six of the 24 Federation Fellowships, including one to a researcher who will return to Australia.
This is two more than the next highest number awarded — four each to the University of Sydney and CSIRO. The University of Melbourne and ANU attracted three Federation Fellowships each, with the remainder awarded to UNSW, Monash and the University of Adelaide.
The Federation Fellowships are part of the Government’s $3 billion Backing Australia’s Ability innovation action plan. They are designed to attract and keep Australia’s leading researchers and encourage international researchers to Australia. The Federation Fellows are regarded as among the best in the world in their fields.
University of Queensland Vice-Chancellor Professor John Hay said this was an “exceptional” result and spoke volumes for the quality and international standing of UQ research. Distinguished Cambridge researcher Anton Middelberg will return to the country to work at UQ.
Each Fellow will receive an indexed annual salary of around $230,000, making the Fellowships the most valuable publicly-funded support offered in Australia. In addition host institutions will receive 26% of the salary amount as on-costs. The UQ awardees are:
• Professor Perry Bartlett (University of Queensland), Project: Cellular Plasticity in the Brain: Discovering molecular mechanisms controlling the production of neurons during brain development, function, ageing and disease;
• Professor Kevin Burrage (University of Queensland), Project: Stochastic modelling of genetic regulatory networks: Subtitle - genetic regulation is a noisy business;
• Professor Max Lu (University of Queensland), Project: Molecular engineered nanomaterials for advanced fuel cells;
• Dr Anton Middelberg (University of Cambridge), Project: Engineering nanostructured bio-inspired products;
• Professor Gerard Milburn (University of Queensland), Project: Principles of quantum nanotechnology;
• Professor John Quiggin (University of Queensland), Project: Sustainable reform of the Murray-Darling system: Property rights, uncertainty and institutions.
Summaries of the Fellowships can be downloaded from the Australian Research Council website: http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/ff-project-summaries-20.03.031revised.pdf.
Pix can be downloaded from www.uq.au/news/press
Media: Further information: Jan King 0413 601 248.
