Young Garvan
The Young Garvan Committee
Young Garvan’s activities are managed independently of the Garvan Institute by a volunteer committee of young professionals. The Committee liaises with the Garvan Research Foundation and young scientists from Garvan to:
- Organise public forums
- Coordinate a number of public awareness and fundraising events
- Fundraise for the annual Young Garvan Award
The Young Garvan Award
The Young Garvan Award is a grant to support outstanding young researchers to undertake innovative, high risk projects and test new ideas.
Applications are judged by three external reviewers who rank them based on:
- Interest and excitement generated by the application as well as the vision and importance of the question being addressed
- Innovation and potential significance of the project
- The applicant’s previous body of work and experience
Past winners
2017
Dr Joanne Reed
Dr Joanne Reed, of Garvan’s Immunology Division, was awarded the 2017 State Custodians Young Garvan Award at ‘Edgy Ideas’. Dr Reed’s winning edgy idea is targeting rogue clones that are responsible for causing autoimmune disease.
2016
Dr Samantha Oakes
Dr Samantha Oakes’ winning idea was to trick cancer cells into thinking they’re infected with a virus so that they send ‘come kill me’ signals to the immune system. The big mystery is why some patients respond to immunotherapy and others do not. It’s thought that cancers actively evade the immune system and avoid immune cell attack. This research could potentially expand the number of patients who can benefit from cancer immunotherapy.
2015
Dr David Croucher
Research based on computational modelling to simulate the drug-specific effects of a number of mutations that bring on chemoresistance.
2014
Dr Daniel Hesselson
Using zebrafish to identify genes or drugs that might impede the progressive loss of dopamine-producing brain cells in Parkinson’s Disease (PD).
2013
2012
Dr Marcel Batten
Dr Daniel Fazakerley
Dr Andreia Pinho
2011
Dr Ebru Boslem
2010
Dr Matt Prior
Dr Liz Caldon