The CMPH End of Year Celebrations and Staff Awards event held at the Adelaide Oval on Friday 8 December recognised and celebrated staff achievements for 2023.
The recipients of this year’s awards are:
VPED Lifetime Achievement Award
Justine Smith: Justine’s lifetime achievements in Ophthalmology have been recognised internationally by receiving distinguished service and achievement awards from both American and Asia-Pacific Academies of Ophthalmology, a gold medal from the International Ocular Inflammation Society and recipient of three awards for the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. and nationally with Justine being awarded the Order of Australia this year.
During Justine’s career, she has been invited to 150 international or national talks and more than 75 invitations to chair sessions at international/national meetings. Justine leaves an impactful legacy from her role as President or Executive Vice-President of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) for the past 10 years. Justine developed ARVO’S first Diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy and established international mentoring programs.
Together with her team Justine has published more than 275 research articles and editorials that have been cited 17,000 times. Justines’ research has been continuously funded by single PI or CIA grants from various grant bodies and multiple charity organisations. Justine has also dedicated herself to developing the next generation of clinician-researchers, with a total of 32 HDR graduates or mentored research collaborators, 78% of whom are women.
Justine has made a highly impactful and lasting legacy to the College of Medicine and Public Health and to medicine more broadly and is a worthy recipient of this award.
Congratulations Matthew Flinders distinguished Professor Justine Smith.
VPED Service Award
Jonathan Karnon: In Jon’s role as Deputy Directory of FHMRI he led many research and professional initiatives to support Flinders University researchers, including his work as co-chair of the FHMRI Consumer Advisory Board, grant writing and mentoring.
Other nominees for this award included: Brad Mitchell and Sutapa Mukherjee.
VPED Award for Fearless Leaders
Danny Eckert: Since 2019, Danny has led FHMRI Sleep Health, a team of over 60 researchers and professional staff, graduating many PhD students and supporting EMCRs to be successful. Recently Danny’s leadership resulted in the filming of “Australia’s Sleep Revolution” with Dr Michael Mosley, to be aired on SBS in early 2024. This will fundamentally lift the profile of sleep medicine as a field and change community understanding of sleep disorders.
VPED Award for Outstanding Student Supervision
James Pearce: James has demonstrated exceptional dedication and commitment to mentoring students and contributing significantly to their research journeys through teaching ethics and research methodologies.
VPED Teaching Excellence Award
Helen Harrison: Helen has been leading the implementation of meta-learning tasks to encourage reflective practice and foster the development of self-regulated learning in her student cohorts. Helen has been recognised for her exceptional dedication, student-centered approach, and unwavering commitment to enhancing student learning.
Outstanding Student-centred Teaching and Learning Award
Colin Watson: Colin has been a key advocate for student-centred teaching for the Remote Health Practice program, encouraging the student voice and ensuring that the program and learning strategies support the unique needs of these students.
Kishan Pandithage: Kishan has led high-quality learning opportunities for medical students in the Northern Territory Medical Program since 2005, promoting student consultation skills and supervising third-year General Practice placements. He illustrates the clinical reasoning and diagnostic processes with case scenarios that are written from his own practice.
Teaching Innovation and Scholarship Award
Michael Baigent: Michael holds full Academic Status with Flinders University and is Head of Flinders Psychological Therapy Services and a Senior Specialist with Drug and Alcohol Services South Australia. He coordinates Mental Health teaching and learning opportunities for 3rd and 4th year medical students. He demonstrates a commitment to preparing Flinders medical students for the medical workforce, to provide high quality and empathetic patient care as hospital interns and beyond.
CMPH Social Accountability Award
Leila Morsy: Leila has made a significant and sustained contribution to social accountability in the College. She has made these contributions through committee memberships as well as through her teaching and research.
CMPH Gender, inclusion, Diversity and Equity (GIDE) Award
Paula Redpath: Paula has made significant and sustained contributions to GIDE in the College. She was an inaugural co-Chair of the GIDE Committee in 2019 (coining the Committee name) and the Dean’s Advisory Group on Gender Equity before that. In these roles Paula has played a crucial role in shaping the College’s approach to GIDE and placing it firmly on the agenda.
Professional Service Award
Carlie Delaine and Elise Tucker (Joint nomination): Carlie Delaine and Elise Tucker received this award as a joint nomination. Their unbelievable commitment to CMPH is multifaceted, however, these two outstanding Technical Services Team members worked above and beyond any expectation, to provide exceptional service during the recent power outage in FMC.
Other nominees for this award included: Shannon Coleman, Elspeth Radford, and Esther Sterk (team nomination).
Professional Research Staff Award
Adam Humenick: Adam’s remarkable contributions to the field of gastrointestinal signalling over the last 11 years make him an exemplary candidate for recognition. He has a strong and helpful presence in the research laboratories and common service facilities including cell/ tissue culture, autoclaving and microscopy.
Other nominees for this award included: Rosie Coleman, Jarrad Law, Dylan McCullough, Allanah Merriman and Carolin Tran.
Early Career Research Award
Bastien LeChat: Bastien is an outstanding independent researcher and this is reflected by his high-quality research outputs, awards and NHMRC Investigator Grant. He also helps those around him to be productive/thrive. This is demonstrated by his commitment to training others and building research analysis tools that enable others to do their research.
Other nominees for this award included: Karissa Barthelson, Norma Bulamu, Hannah Scott, Joshua Trigg, Moira Walsh, and Molla Wassie.
Mid-Career Research Award
Nicole Lovato: Nicole co-directs insomnia and circadian rhythm research program at the AISH, Flinders University leading a team of 15 including HDR students, postdoctoral, research and clinicians across the disciplines of psychology and medicine and has continued involvement as co-chair of the AISH Community Advisory Group.
Other nominees for this award included: Ali Soltani.
Senior Research Award
Justine Smith: Prof. Justine Smith is an ophthalmologist-scientist, co-appointed as a Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor at Flinders University and a Senior Consultant at Flinders Medical Centre. She makes extraordinary contributions to FHMRI and the University as Deputy Director for Clinical Translation. Prof. Smith leads one of the premier uveitis research groups internationally, combining a laboratory-based program that investigates diverse disease mechanisms with a clinical program that focuses on outcomes of infectious, non-infectious and malignant uveitis. She has attracted significant funding to support her research and published over 250 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Other nominees for this award included: Simon Conn, Philip Dinning, Tamara Mackean and Janni Peterson.
PhD/Postdoctural Award
Leanne Winner: Leanne is a full-time final-year PhD student, part-time Research Assistant, and mother of two young children. In the last year, Leanne has published 2 papers, with another under review. These are all in highly regarded journals.
Congratulations to all nominees and recipients of these awards and your successes for the year.