CCS Local News and What's on

10 Aug 2014

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

64th Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting

The Australian delegation
with Minister Andrew Robb
(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 at the start of the week".

Photo of the week

At Monash Open Day, Sunday 3 August, at the halls of residence. The Clayton campus looked (and sounded) idyllic, with emerald green lawns and landscaped native gardens shrieking with rosellas. The organisation was superlative, and it was wonderful to have friendly, helpful ambassadors everywhere. For more photos of the open day and other Monash activities, see Monash Facebook page. Our own CCS student information night is coming up, 14 August.
See more CCS photos at: