Young Garvan

Young Garvan is a volunteer group of young professionals who support and raise awareness of Garvan’s work as well as raise funds to support Garvan’s young scientists.

Young Garvan

Young Garvan is a volunteer group of young professionals who support and raise awareness of Garvan’s work as well as raise funds to support Garvan’s young scientists.

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 

Dr Timothy Mercer

2012 

Dr Marcel Batten
Dr Daniel Fazakerley
Dr Andreia Pinho

2011 

Dr Ebru Boslem

2010 

Dr Matt Prior
Dr Liz Caldon