Two researchers from the UQ School of Mathematics and Physics are among the winners of the 2015 Australian Academy of Science awards, announced this week.
Associate Professor Tamara Davis, who studies the nature of dark energy and dark matter, and one of the most highly-cited astrophysicists in the world,will be receiving the Australian Academy of Science’s 2015 Nancy Mills Medal for Women in Science.
The medal – honouring the contributions made to science by the late Professor Nancy Millis – is presented annually to a female researcher who has demonstrated exceptional scientific leadership within 15 years of receiving her PhD.
Associate Professor Davis’ wide-ranging work includes testing advanced theories of gravity, measuring time-dilation of distant supernovae, using galaxies to measure the mass of the lightest massive particle in nature (the neutrino), and discovering that active galaxies fuelled by black holes can be used as standard candles to measure the acceleration of the universe.
She currently sits on the Executive of both the ARC Centre of Excellence in All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) and one of the largest programs on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, OzDES.
PhD student Hien Duy Nguyen will be receiving the Academy’s 2015 A.K. Head Travelling Fellowship for Mathematical Scientists for his project entitled False Discovery Rate Control in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies via Markov Random Fields.
The A.K. Head Fellowship is awarded every year, to allow an early career researcher to promote and develop their work overseas.
Mr Nguyen will be using his award to travel to Canada and the USA to research with world-class scientists in the areas of medical imaging and computational statistics.
His proposed project aims to develop advanced statistical methodology for accurately conducting inferential statistics in brain imaging studies.
Head of School Professor Joseph Grotowski congratulated the winners on their achievement.
“The Australian Academy of Science honorific awards for scientific excellence, and the travelling fellowships, are highly sought-after and prestigious awards,” Professor Grotowski said.
“We are delighted that Tamara and Hien are two of this year’s winners on the Academy’s list, and wish them both the very best in their future research.”
The School of Mathematics and Physics researchers were joined by two other winners from UQ:
- Professor Chengzhong Yu (Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology , UQ), who will be receiving the 2015 Le Fèvre Memorial Prize for research in basic chemistry; and
- Dr Jian Yang (Queensland Brain Institute, UQ), who will be receiving the 2015 Ruth Stephens Gani Medal for distinguished research in human genetics.
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