Flinders health experts celebrate wins in mental health, public health research and pharmacology, while the University boasts three innovation award finalists in a tight competition – and crosses fingers for the winners announcement next week.
Lifetime achievement award for mental health advocate
Professor Eimear Muir-Cochrane has been awarded the 2020 Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing (JPMHN) Lifetime Achievement Award. This international honour recognises her significant contribution to the field over many years, and will see her present at the prestigious Skellern lecture in London next year.
Professor Muir-Cochrane is passionate about improving the experiences of people using psychiatric hospital facilities. Reducing restrictive practices and contributing to mental health nursing education and practice has dominated her work for three decades.
She is President of the Australian College of Mental Health Nursing and an expert member of the Mental Health Professional Online Development Program.
The 2020 Skellern lecture will be held at Middlesex University in London, in June.
Professor Muir-Cochrane contributed to an InDaily article this week about the concerning treatment of South Australian children experiencing mental crises.
September accolades for health and medicine stars
Associate Professor Anna Ziersch was presented with the Public Health Research Award for her presentation at the 2019 Australian Public Health Conference on refugee and asylum seeker oral health.
The national conference was held in Adelaide over 17 to 19 September 2019.
Meanwhile honours student Asha Kapetas received the 2019 Simcyp academic award for ‘Most Informative Scientific Report’.
Simcyp is an international consortium that includes 80 out of the top 100 drug companies in the world, making her win a fantastic honour for her and the University.
Ms Kapetas’ award-winning paper ‘Guidance for Rifampin and Midazolam Dosing Protocols To Study Intestinal and Hepatic Cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A4 Induction and De-induction’ was presented at the annual Simcyp Consortium, held in the UK over 11 – 13 September. She is supervised by Associate Professor in Clinical Paramedic Pharmacology Andrew Rowland.
Flinders boasts three innovation award finalists
Dr Jing Jing Wang is a finalist in the 2019 Winnovation Awards – in both the Science, and the Emerging Innovator categories – for her groundbreaking research that identifies molecular ‘signatures’ to help tackle autoimmune diseases.
Dr Wang has found a new way to purify and sequence antibodies to diagnose and treat diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, primary Sjögren’s syndrome and lupus.
After presenting key research papers on Rheumatology and Immunology at the Plenary Session of the 2019 Asia Pacific League Against Rheumatism Congress, she is heading to Beijing next month to give oral presentations at the International Union of Immunology Societies Conference. She also has papers under review with Annals Rhematic Diseases, Frontiers in Immunology, Cell and Vaccine.
PhD candidate Hannah Scott is also a finalist in the awards, shortlisted in the Young Innovator category for THIM, a sleep tracker she developed in collaboration with her PhD supervisors Emeritus Professor Leon Lack and Dr Nicole Lovato that can treat insomnia in less than 24 hours.
Ms Scott is competing against Flinders business and international relations student Eloise Hall in the same category. Ms Hall and her colleague Isobel Marshall have been nominated for their social enterprise Taboo, which sells organic sanitary items to Australians, with profits supporting women in developing countries.
The Winnovation Awards showcase the success of South Australian female innovators.
Winners of the 2019 awards will be announced on 3 October, at an event to be held at the National Wine Centre.