University of Melbourne researchers receive NHMRC Research Excellence Awards

Associate Professor Louise Cheng, Associate Professor Garron Dodd and Professor Laura Mackay are the recipients of the NHMRC research excellence awards. Image credit: Hilary Wardhaugh Photography.
Associate Professor Louise Cheng, Associate Professor Garron Dodd and Professor Laura Mackay are the recipients of the NHMRC research excellence awards. Image credit: Hilary Wardhaugh Photography.

University of Melbourne researchers Associate Professors Louise Cheng, Garron Dodd and Professor Laura Mackay have been honoured with the NHMRC’s most highly-ranked research excellence awards for their ideas, innovation and investigator grant applications.

Their research seeks to uncover the fundamental mechanisms of health and disease and to develop new treatments for cancer, obesity and diabetes.

  • Associate Professor Louise Cheng at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre has received the NHRMC Marshall and Warren Ideas Grant Award for her project ‘Organ competition: how do tumours grow at the expense of other tissues in cancer cachexia?’
  • Associate Professor Garron Dodd in the School of Biomedical Sciences has received the NHRMC Marshall and Warren Innovation Award for his project ‘Turbocharging Treatments for Type-2 Diabetes’
  • Professor Laura Mackay has received the 2024 NHMRC Elizabeth Blackburn Investigator Grant Award (Leadership in Basic Science) and is the highest ranked female applicant for an Investigator Grant (Leadership) in the basic science pillar for 2024, for her project: ‘Unravelling the Diversity and Function of Tissue-Resident Lymphocytes.’

“I am delighted to see our researchers honoured with these prestigious NHRMC awards. Their work is fundamentally important to understand the mechanisms of disease and will have a real impact on developing new therapies and treatments in cancer and diabetes.” said Professor Jane Gunn AO, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences.