CCS Local News and What's on: 2014-08-10

Photo of the week: Prebiotic food

Vegetables high in prebiotic fibre

The Department of Gastroenterology is undertaking research into the impact of increasing what's called 'prebiotic' fibre in your diet. Prebiotics are fibre compounds that provide a substrate for beneficial bacteria that colonize the large bowel, and thereby stimulate the growth and activity of these bacteria, which may benefit not only digestion and absorption of minerals, but also immune system function. ABC Catalyst are doing a special two part program called 'Gut reaction', being broadcast Thursday 14 and 21 August 2014. See more:

http://www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/gastro/prebiotic/
Photo gallery of prebiotic foods and dishes
CCS Monash's Google+ page for more photo albums

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. To save a particular event to your own calendar, please click on the "Google calendar" icon found near the event name. 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 Aug 12	10:00AM	►	2014 CCS 3MT competition
Thu Aug 14	6:00 PM	►	2014 AMREP student information night

Forthcoming events

Mon 18-Fri Aug 22		►	MNHS Research week
Wed Aug 20	12:30 PM	►	PhD Mid-candidature review
Fri Aug 29	1:30 PM	►	Monash Institute of Medical Engineering Meeting

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

Congratulations

Prof Stephen Jane congratulating

Eleanor Woolveridge on her award

Eleanor Woolveridge has received a scholarship from The Royal College of Pathologists of Australia for her project about the clinical relevance of concentrations of BAFF/APRIL heterotrimers in the serum and urine of patients diagnosed with Primary Sjogrens Syndrome (pSS). pSS is an autoimmune disease, in which lymphocytes get into salivary glands and tear ducts. The scholarship is offered annually for projects associated with pathology, jointly developed by a student and supervisor. Eleanor's supervisors were Prof Fabienne Mackay (Head, Department of Immunonology), Dr Andrew Wei and Dr Fabien Vincent. Well done Eleanor!

The Australian delegation with
Minister Andrew Robb
(Photo: David Fisher)

Central Clinical School's Rebecca Segrave recently attended the 64th Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting in Germany, along with 37 Nobel laureates in science and 600 early career researchers from all over the world. She is featured in ABC's Science Show which can be viewed here. According to Rebecca, the week was an inspirational one.
"The week has exceeded every expectation that I had. It has been inspirational. I'd seen the motto or the slogan—inspire, educate, connect—but I didn't really identify with it, and all of those things have been true for all of us and I think that is what has made the meeting. We are inspired in a way we never imagined we would be..."

Trish Veitch is a Masters student, enrolled in the Masters in Biomedical Science Part 1. She is supervised by Dr Jane Muir, Department of Gastroenterology. Her Masters looks at the role of prebiotic fibre in relation to wellbeing, but also gut health, concentrating on the high prebiotic health fibre foods and looking at wholefood sources, rather than supplements. In a previous life, she was a professional chef.
http://www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/education/profiles/veitch.html

Research highlights

Last week Australia-India Trauma Systems Collaboration (AITSC) hosted its Improving Trauma Care Roundtable at the AMREP theatre. The interactive forum brought together practitioners, researchers and policy makers from Australia and India, and was a wonderful opportunity to engage and learn about the challenges of improving trauma care and how the AITSC is addressing these challenges. Improved trauma systems are a part of the solution to the global injury epidemic and have been very successful in Victoria. The roundtable discussed whether they could work to reduce the 5 million trauma deaths elsewhere in the world. Many thanks to those who attended the session, and a special thanks to our Indian delegates and speakers.

Education: Introduction to clinical trials

Our first group of participants

Central Clinical School held a four day short course at the end of July, introducing participants to clinical trials, developing a clinical research question and creating a concise protocol that includes literature review and study design. The short course was the first pilot of units to be offered in the Translational Research PhD from 2015 and was aimed at medical doctors, biomedical scientists, nurses, physiotherapists, clinicians, epidemiologists, psychologists, pharmacists, biochemists and public health researchers.

The course received good feedback from participants. All attendees said that they would recommend the course to a colleague.
Links

Media mentions

04/08/2014 Associate Professor Edwina Wright, Department of Infectious Diseases, commented on HIV. She said that in Australia, the average person has been infected for about three years before diagnosis,

The Saturday Paper

10 Aug 2014