Working from temporary facilities as Christchurch rebuilds, she is guiding doctors and policy makers across the world as they attempt to make the best decisions for their patients.
Continue reading Giving patients more control of their lives
The global race to develop high efficiency, low cost solar energy is fierce. And Baohua Jia and her colleagues are front runners.
Conventional solar cells are efficient, but thick and expensive. Baohua and her colleagues imagine a future when solar cells are so thin and cheap that city skyscrapers will be powered by a coating on their glass. But at present such thin-film solar cells are not efficient enough for general use.
Using her knowledge of nanotechnology and optics, Baohua and her colleagues have already created thin-film solar cells that are more than 20 per cent more efficient than those of her competitors. They have already lodged two patents.
But Baohua thinks she can do better. And that will be the focus of the work assisted by her $25,000 L’Oréal Australia & New Zealand For Women in Science Fellowship.
Continue reading More efficient solar cells with quantum dots
Dr Kylie Mason has set herself the goal of developing new ways of treating diseases that are considered incurable.
Unlike the traditional method of making a hologram—which involves reflecting a laser off a real object—the new technique simulates objects within computer software. In a recent test, a virtual, digital hologram file was produced and etched as a 3 mm-wide nanoscale pattern onto a glass plate using ANFF-NSW’s Electron Beam Lithography facility. When laser light was shone through the glass, a 3D hologram sprang into life.
Research, led by the Australian National Fabrication Facility’s (ANFF) Queensland node at Griffith University, promises a new generation of tiny microelectromechanical system (MEMS) sensors that are sensitive to very low forces, can work at high frequencies and in extreme conditions—above 1,000°C or under an acceleration of several times g—and are resistant to chemical attack. Continue reading Micro sensors for extreme conditions
It is Australia’s leading cause of blindness and there is no way to stop it progressing even when detected in its earliest phase.
“There have been advances in treatment but that’s at the end stage,” says Prof Robyn Guymer, who heads the Macular Research Unit at the Centre for Eye Research Australia. Continue reading Laser therapy to fight early signs of eye disease
And Jane Wright has been taking high school girls to explore science in the bush for over 25 years.
Both of these passionate professionals have been awarded a Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching.
Continue reading Camping and puppets top science teaching prize
Her achievements won her a $20,000 L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowship in 2011, which she is using to study the low light, deep water reefs that underlie tropical surface reefs at depths of 100 metres or more.
Continue reading The complex life of coral
Australian researchers have won the decades-long race to define the structure of plasminogen—a protein whose active form quickly dissolves blood clots.
The current crop of clot-busting drugs have many side effects, including bleeding and thinning of the blood, so harnessing the body’s own mechanism for clearing clots could offer a better way. Continue reading Clues to switching off your blood clots
Dr Eve McDonald-Madden is using maths to help governments and others make tough decisions on how best to use limited resources to preserve ecosystems under threat.
The young Australian scientist helps to save species, not by going out into the field, but by analysing the data other people have collected on endangered species. Continue reading The mathematics of conservation