20 Jul 2014

Photo of the week

Prof Jenny Hoy giving the public lecture
The 2014 CCS public lecture by Prof Jenny Hoy was held Thursday 10 July. We've now got a photo gallery up, showing our visitors and guests, the community support from the Victorian AIDS Council and Living Positive Victoria, the Burnet Institute and the Alfred's Education Resource Centre on STIs. See link below.

You can follow AIDS 2014 updates on Twitter, by following:
with the hashtag #AIDS2014.

HDR seminars and major CCS events

All event notices are maintained on the CCS Events calendars (including local events such as professional development and trade fairs and HDR calendars). For a consolidated view, details of events and to see all events and deadlines, see Announcements. Various Departments have their own calendars, see CCS seminar index: www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/events/seminars.html

What's on for this week

Tue Jul 22
9:30 AM
Animal Ethics Information Session

11:00 AM
PhD Pre-submission review seminar: Ms Emma Tavender

12:30 PM
Immunology Seminar: A/Prof Menno Van Zelm

Forthcoming events

Tue Jul 29
11:00 AM
PhD pre-submission review - Mr Michael Cangkrama

11:30 AM
PhD Mid-candidature review seminar - Ms Maria Daglas

3:30 PM
Mid-candidature review seminar - Ms Gulcan Sarila
Wed Jul 30
12:30 PM
PhD Pre-submission review - Mr Damien Easton

1:00 PM

Major CCS events

2014 CCS 3MT competition

2013 CCS 3MT winners





Central Clinical School HDR students regularly compete in the "Three Minute Thesis" competition (3MT), offered in every Australian university. The CCS 3 Minute Thesis Competition is an opportunity for HDR students to convey the relevance and importance of their research in just 3 minutes.  2014 CCS 3MT will be held on Tuesday 12 August 10-11am at Lecture theatre, Level 5, Alfred Centre.  Please come along and support the participants.  All welcome.   CLICK HERE to RSVP.  Please visit the CCS 3MT competition page for participants' profiles and other information. 

14 August 2014 AMREP student information night

    Please see: 2015 CCS Postgraduate and Honours project index booklet (806 kb pdf) for the projects on offer for 2015.
    • Time: 6-8pm
    • Venue: AMREP lecture theatre, 80 Commercial Road, Melbourne 3004
    • Enquiries: hdr.ccs@monash.edu ph +61 3 9903 0027
    • To RSVP: CLICK HERE

    2015 CCS Postgraduate and Honours projects

    In preparation for the 2014 AMREP Honours Information evening to be held on August 14, please CLICK HERE for a copy of the 2015 CCS Postgraduate and Honours project index booklet (806 kb pdf).

    Information night details:
    • Time: 6-8pm
    • Venue: AMREP lecture theatre, 80 Commercial Road, Melbourne 3004
    • Enquiries: hdr.ccs@monash.edu ph +61 3 9903 0027
    • To RSVP: CLICK HERE

    HIV research in Monash: Prof Jenny Hoy, A/Prof Edwina Wright, Dr Janine Trevillyan

    Video of Monash
    HIV researchers
    Professor Jenny Hoy, Associate Professor Edwina Wright and Dr Janine Trevillyan are all based in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Alfred campus. Here, they talk about their areas of HIV research. Janine is a clinician and a PhD student supervised by Jenny Hoy. They both work on the cardiovascular health issues faced by ageing HIV positive patients. Jenny's other main area of research is osteoporosis. A/Prof Edwina Wright’s main research focus includes neurological disorders and opportunistic infections of the central nervous system (CNS) in HIV infected individuals. See more at:

    $1.5M grant for project to make more heart transplants possible

    L-R: Dr Rouchong Ou, Dr John
    Woodard & Prof Frank Rosenfeldt.
    Absent: Mr Jonathan Neville
    Professor Frank Rosenfeldt is one of four researchers working on a new project to enable the production of a device to perfuse transplant donor hearts. The project based at the Alfred and Monash University has received a $1.5M government grant to develop a device which will reduce the damage produced by ice storage and enable hearts to be resuscitated and used as human transplants.

    Prof Fabienne Mackay talks about restoration of immune function in leukaemia patients

    Prof Fabienne Mackay:
    Video on CLL research
    Professor Fabienne Mackay talks about her team's ground breaking research published in the prestigious journal, Leukemia in April of this year. Immune defects in patients with #leukaemia prevent them from fighting the cancer. Their study looked particularly at Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) patients, as they tend to die from infection, rather than the cancer itself. They found that rare, but critical, cells to fight CLL can be restored. She says, "The best feature ever made to fight cancer is the immune system."

    Media mentions

    09/07/2014 Professor Sharon Lewin, Head of Department of Infectious Diseases, commented on a setback in the search for a cure to HIV, the virus which causes AIDS. 
    ABC Radio National plus 126 regional radio syndications. 
    612 ABC Brisbane (Brisbane)
    18/07/2014 Professor Lewin, commented on the news that the "Mississippi Baby" who was reportedly cured of HIV, still shows signs of the virus. 
    UK News Yahoo!, Yahoo! News Australia 
    https://uk.news.yahoo.com/setback-cure-overshadows-aids-council-war-014802387.html#qnp9K35
    21/07/2014 Professor Lewin commented on the the 20th International AIDS Conference.   She said that AIDS 2014 is quite an unique meeting and that it's completely multi-disciplinary.  She said that it has three major programs within it, Science, Leadership and Community and those three pillars are really essential in getting advances in the HIV response.
    Radio Australia, Intellasia.net, Gay News Network, Reuters UK, Yahoo! UK and Ireland and five other online publications



    09/07/2014 Professor Peter Gibson, Head of Department of Gastroenterology, comments on the 'great gluten debate', clarifying recent research findings which suggest that people who think they are gluten-sensitive might instead be reacting to the #FODMAPs found in wheat.
    New Scientist 12 July 2014

    Staff news

    Welcome to the following staff:

    Vania Januar joins the MAPrc team as a volunteer, working with Dr Kate Hoy in the Psychiatry Neurotechnology team.  Her work interests are behavioural epigenetics , neuropsychiatry and public health.  Vania is from Indonesia and she enjoys drawing, writing, horror movies and cake.  Thank you for voluteering, Vania!


     
    Laura Williams joins Biomedical Sciences HR Services Hub as HR Client Support Officer replacing Gemma Patford who has moved into the Assistant HR Business Partner role in the Faculty of Science.  Laura has recently finished her undergraduate degree with Monash University and comes to us from Swinburne University working as an Administration Assistant in their Online Studies Department.


    Mr Javier Haurat -  Immunology, Lab Operations Officer. For the past 6 years Javier has worked as a Laboratory Scientist and most recently as the Facility Manager at the Centre for Blood Cell Therapies at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. He has extensive experience in tissue culture, PC2 environments, GMP, training and OH&S policies and procedures. In his previous roles he was able to capture a range of areas within research including bench work, scientific reporting and biostatical collection, manipulation and collation.
    Dr Jane Varney - Gastroenterology

     

     

     

    Farewell to the following staff:

    Dr Alexander Agrotis, Ms Astrid Voskamp, Mr Imala Alwis,