News Archive

Welcome to this the first edition of our Faculty newsletter. We will publish three editions of the newsletter every year and hope that through this medium, alumni, staff, students and supporters of the Faculty will be able to keep in touch with what is happening in the Faculty.

As you can see from our leading story 2005 was a wonderful year for the Faculty, with staff in our School of Biomedical, Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences receiving many "glittering prizes" for their teaching and research, including the ultimate accolade of a Nobel Prize for Professor Barry Marshall and Emeritus Professor Robin Warren.

Other Schools in the Faculty have also had great success. The non-invasive medical technology developed by the biophysics group in the School of Physics is bringing enormous benefit to over 15 million people who suffer from iron overload diseases. The group has taken their Ferriscan technology from basic research through to full commercialisation.

If you visit the School of Human Movement and Exercise Science chances are you may meet up with television crews and international sports stars. The biomechanics group have developed a world class motion analysis laboratory that is regularly used by sports stars including the Sri Lankan spinner Muralitharan.

With support from the Australian Research Council the Face Lab in the School of Psychology is putting a different spin on our understanding of what makes a face attractive.

It's not just our research that attracts attention; staff in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology were recognised by the Australian University Teaching Committee for their innovative teaching.

Our successes in teaching and research helps us attract high quality students to the Faculty, our median TER score has been rising over the past five years and last years class had an median score of 92.4.

The Faculty commenced its first transnational teaching program as a collaborative venture with PSB Corporation of Singapore, with our first student intake occurring in September 2004. So far our life science program has attracted over 200 students.

2005 was a very successful year for researchers in the Faculty with them being awarded over $10M to support research. Australian Research Council Discovery Grants included major support for Steve Smith's research on the mechanisms of starch mobilisation, Murray Baker's research on biomaterials for tissue engineering, Ian McArthur and Sergei Kuzenko for their work on supersymmetry and supergravitiy, Andre Luiten, Eugene Ivanov and Clayton Locke for their research that will develop new clocks to test some of the assumptions in modern physics; and for Jim Whelan and Harvey Millar to support their work on the targeting of proteins to mitochondria. David Blair won a major linkage grant for work on robotic astronomy and gravitational wave data analysis. Discovery grants to staff in the Faculty amounted to over $7M and represent nearly 50% of UWA's ARC funding.

We also had success in National Health and Medical Research Council grants, receiving nearly $3M. These included major support for Alan Harvey's work on nerve regeneration, and for the work of Geoff Shellam, Alec Redwood and Lee Smith on multiple cytomegalovirus infections.

These are exciting times for the Faculty and we hope that through our newsletter you will be able to share in this excitement and that you will be able to follow where we go over the next few years.

Professor George Stewart, Dean.