Emerging scientists

Emerging scientists

Claire French

Forensic scientist

When Claire French, 2006 MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year, first discovered a simple test for identifying where on the body a particular cell and its DNA came from, she wasn’t sure what to do or who to tell – so she kept quiet about it. ‘It was only when my supervisor wanted to see what I had been doing that the excitement started. Until then I’d never heard of IP (intellectual property) and hadn’t thought of patents.’

Keenly interested in forensic science, she is excited about the potential of her discovery to help provide evidence in criminal investigations. Although DNA from cells found at a crime scene can link a person to the crime, it can’t provide evidence about which part of the body the cells came from. French’s technique involves staining epithelial cells to reveal different colours according to which part of the body they are from. She hopes that her research will be used to develop a histological staining kit for routine use at crime scenes and in forensic laboratories.

In her spare time she helps the community in another way – as a surf lifesaver at Piha Beach.

Overall Winner, MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards 2006  

Gregory Francis

Chemist

Playing around with highly volatile chemicals such as saran gas and TATP may sound exciting, if a little dangerous, but hardcore punk musician and chemist Greg Francis speaks from experience when he says it’s ‘not much fun’. He spent some time at the Australian Defence Centre’s science laboratories using their samples of chemical weapons agents (CWA) that are favoured by terrorists, to calibrate an instrument capable of instantly detecting minute quantities of them. The instrument, a Selected Ion Flow Tube Mass Spectrometer (SIFT-MS), was originally developed to model the formation of molecules in interstellar space, but it has extensive terrestrial applications. A simple bag sample of air allows the detection of any contaminants with acute sensitivity.

Through his investigation of the ion properties of CWAs, Francis has been able to redesign the instrument to detect nerve gases, blister agents and sulphur mustards to a few parts in a trillion, a practical contribution to international efforts to combat terrorism.

Runner-up Science in our Communities, MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards 2006   

Wendy Imlach

Agricultural scientist

Wendy Imlach has always been interested in neuroscience, the physiological processes that make the brain work, so she jumped at the chance to undertake research into a group of neurotoxins that cause ryegrass staggers, a neurological disease that affects grazing animals.

The toxins are produced by a fungus that grows in ryegrass, and Imlach has shown that they block a particular ion channel in the brain which disrupts the signal from the brain to the muscles. Animals affected by the disease, which costs the New Zealand agricultural industry about $100 million a year, exhibit tremors and loss of muscle control. Her research on how toxins affect electrical signalling in the brain also has significance for human neurological diseases.

Winner Advancing Human Health, MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards 2006   

David Williamson

Robotics

An electronics enthusiast from a young age, David Williamson was inspired by lecturer Dale Carnegie to extend his research into mobile robotics. He is currently developing an innovative concept for using robots to locate people trapped by disaster-related debris. While most search robots operate as individual units which are large, costly to replace and have limited search coverage, Williamson has concentrated on a distributed hierarchical approach. A ‘grandmother’ robot will act as a generic platform to transport multiple highly manoeuvrable ‘mother’ robots to the search zone. These small robots will deploy and supervise a network of tiny matchbox-sized disposable ‘daughter’ robots, equipped with radio communication, tiny cameras and other sensors. The demand for miniaturisation and optimisation technology has already led to the incorporation of some leading-edge hardware, but Williamson thinks the real scope for innovation lies in the development of new software.

Runner-up Science in our Communities, MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards 2006   

Hayley Reynolds

Human health

The human body has between 500 and 600 lymph nodes arranged in different ‘fields’ and there are potentially 43 node fields which melanoma can spread to, rapidly and often unpredictably. That makes it difficult for doctors to check all the fields and track the spread of the disease in its earliest most curable stage. That’s why there is such interest in the computer model being developed by doctoral student Hayley Reynolds. Using the extensive database of the Sydney Melanoma Unit, Reynolds has used information from 5000 patients to map which lymph nodes are most likely to be first invaded by melanoma cells. Eventually these ‘sentinel nodes’ will be able to be displayed on a 3D computer model of the human body, revealing patterns of melanoma spread which will help doctors to monitor and predict the disease spread more accurately and efficiently. Reynolds was motivated to direct her expertise in biotechnology to the clinical field by the serious illness and death of a close family member.

Runner–up Advancing Human Health, MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards 2006  

By Marilyn Head

Image courtesy of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology

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