‘Eyes on the prizes’ for Chemistry’s PhD students

Three PhD students from UOW’s School of Chemistry have all recently achieved notable individual research successes.

Ms Jane Deeley (3^rd year PhD) won the students’ poster prize of a laptop computer at the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids conference in Kansas.

Ms Jessica Nealon (2^nd year PhD) won a student travel fellowship for $1,700 from the International Society for Eye Research to attend their conference in Beijing in September.

And Ms Jennifer Saville (1^st year PhD) won the student section of the recent UOW Trailblazer competition for her presentation entitled, “A novel non-invasive technique for the diagnosis of dry eye”. Now in its fourth year, the Trailblazer competition (run in conjunction with UniQuest Pty Ltd) was developed to reward and stimulate innovative thinking – in particular to encourage ideas and early-stage research with the potential to benefit the community, industry or business as well as generate a financial return.

All the students are using mass spectrometry to elucidate the role of lipids (fats) in ocular (eye) diseases such as cataract, presbyopia (short sightedness) and dry eye.

The three PhD students are all supervised by Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemistry Dr Stephen Blanksby.

Last reviewed: 13 August, 2008