Holding their winning trophies at Government House in Sydney ... Holding their winning trophies at Government House in Sydney last night are Professor Matt Wand (left) and Professor Gordon Wallace.

UOW triumphs at inaugural NSW Scientist of the Year Awards

The University of Wollongong has triumphed at the inaugural NSW Scientist of the Year Awards held in Sydney last night winning two of the nine award categories.

Professor Gordon Wallace was the winner of the ‘Chemistry Category’ and Professor Matt Wand the winner of the ‘Mathematical Sciences Category’. Solar cell expert Professor Martin Green from the University of New South Wales was named overall winner of the NSW Scientist of the Year Award.

The ceremony held at Government House in Sydney was a celebration and recognition of outstanding individuals carrying out cutting-edge work that generates economic, health, environmental or technological benefits to NSW. The Director General of the Department of State and Regional Development, Barry Buffier, gave the welcome and introduction and the Minister for Science and Medical Research, Mr Tony Stewart gave the opening address. UOW’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Judy Raper, was also in attendance.

Professor Wallace is Executive Research Director at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science and Director of the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute at the University of Wollongong.

A scientist whose research efforts promise to revolutionise medical science by creating new bionic materials, Professor Wallace is the University of Wollongong’s sole ARC Federation Fellow. The fellowships are awarded to outstanding researchers to help retain their skills within Australia.

In 1990, Professor Wallace established the world’s first intelligent polymer research laboratory in NSW, and he is now widely recognised as a world leader in the development of these materials. More recently, Professor Wallace has been focused on combining nanotechnology with his research into intelligent materials and is now a recognised world expert and pioneer in the emerging area of Nanobionics, a field which bridges nanotechnology and human biology.

Professor Matt Wand has had a stellar international academic career that has included appointments in the United States at Texas A&M University, Rice University in Houston and a five-year stint as Associate Professor in Biostatistics at Harvard.

He is on the International Statistical Institute (ISI) Web of Knowledge list of highly cited researchers, and was Professor of Statistics at the University of NSW. He joined UOW as a Research Professor of Statistics within the School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics. Professor Wand has been inducted as a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) in the United States.

He was inducted for "fundamental contributions to the theory, computation and applications of nonparametric and semiparametric statistical methods".