Inaugural Dr Sue Newton Scholarship award
PhD researcher Mark Pellegrino received the inaugural Dr Sue Newton Scholarship during a special lecture from Professor Ian McConnell held to celebrate the award on Thursday 24 November.
Ian McConnell is Professor of Veterinary Science and Director of Research at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, England. He is the Miegunyah Distinguished Fellow at the University of Melbourne in 2006.
In the lecture Professor McConnell gave his personal perspective of "One Medicine" and the interplay between veterinary medicine, medicine and biomedical science.
The lecture explored the value of naturally occurring animal diseases as real problems offering unique insights into disease processes.
The lecture illustrated discoveries from some of his research on the ruminant lentiviruses as studied in sheep a valuable model for AIDS and retroviral pathogenesis, scrapie a relevant model for vCJD and other examples of animal diseases of comparative significance.
Mr Pellegrino will use the scholarship to travel to Glasgow where he will present his research at the 11 th International Congress of Parasitology and then to the University of Zurich where he will continue laboratory studies on the interactome-based search for novel regulators in Caenorhabditis elegans development.
"What I hope from being the inaugural recipient of this award is to obtain novel and fascinating results from my project and to have the opportunity to communicate these findings on an international scale," he said.
The scholarship celebrates the life and work of Dr Sue Newton who was a highly respected and recognised Research Scientist, Head of the Molecular Vaccines Department in the former Victorian Institute of Animal Science, and a Visiting Research Fellow of the Faculty of Veterinary Science of the University of Melbourne, when she died tragically and unexpectedly in March 2003.
Prof Ian McConnell will be presenting a free public lecture “In Fear of Food: A Perspective on Mad Cow Disease” on Wednesday 15 February at the University of Melbourne. For more details please contact the Faculty Marketing Manager.