Griffith University Vice Chancellor and President Professor Ian O’Connor has congratulated Professor Emeritus Alan Mackay-Sim on being named the 2017 Australian of the Year.
The announcement was made by Prime Minister, The Honourable Malcom Turnbull MP, at a gala ceremony at Parliament House in Canberra on 25 January.
“Griffith University is extremely proud to have such a remarkable man and scientist among us,” Professor O’Connor said.
As the former Director of the National Centre for Adult Stem Cell Research, and Professor Emeritus at the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery, Alan has spent his career looking at the regenerative properties of stem cells and how these can be used to repair damaged spinal cords.
His research has laid the foundation for global efforts in what is truly an extraordinary field.
Professor O’Connor also offered his warm congratulations to other members of the Griffith community awarded Australia Day honours.
Bill Lovegrove
Professor Bill Lovegrove, former Deputy Vice Chancellor at Griffith
Author: admin
Griffith University response to media reports
A small number of media reports have incorrectly claimed Australian of the Year and Professor Alan Mackay-Sim was directly involved in the surgery that enabled a previously paralysed man to regain use of his legs.
That surgery was conducted by Dr Pawel Tabakow in Poland in 2014.
The work of Dr Pawel Tabakow is to be applauded as a very significant advancement in spinal cord injury repair. His colleague Professor Geoffrey Raisman was the first to use olfactory ensheathing cell transplantation for spinal cord injury repair in animals. Professor Mackay-Sim continues to acknowledge their contributions.
It is without dispute that Professor Alan Mackay-Sim’s research and clinical trials between 2002 and 2008 paved the way for the ongoing work being done today in the study and development of stem cell transplantation.
Human clinical trials are critical milestones in research development for which Professor Mackay-Sim is acknowledged as leading by the worldwide scientific community. Dr Tabakow
Goondiwindi students enjoy Griffith, city stay
Growing up in the southern Queensland town of Goondiwindi – population around 6000 – Toni Clarence knows how daunting it can be to relocate from the country to the big city.
That’s why sixteen soon-to-be Year 12 students from Goondiwindi State High School were in good hands recently when they spent a week visiting the Gold Coast and Brisbane to gain invaluable insight into life at Griffith University.
Toni spent her childhood in Goondiwindi before moving to the Gold Coast to study a Bachelor of Teaching at Griffith.
Having also completed a Bachelor of Education at the University and then teaching at various Queensland state schools, she returned to Goondiwindi in 1998 and later completed a Masters in Guidance and Counselling.
As Goondiwindi SHS’s Guidance Officer, Toni was the ideal choice to bring the excited students from the country to the coast.
“I remember how daunting it was when I left Goondiwindi to come to
New wave of engineering students look to Griffith
For soon-to-be Griffith engineering student, Kiarna Broomhead, the decision was easy.
On receiving an early offer to study at Griffith School of Engineering, the 17-year-old instantly called her dad who reminded her it was exactly the result for which she had hoped. She accepted in an instant and immediately breathed a sigh of relief and looked to the future.
The decision was made all the easier by older sisters, Anita and Jessie, who had already forged a family path to Griffith to study digital media and accounting and finance respectively. Kiarna is now forging her own pathway.
Throughout Year 12 and for much of Year 11 she had considered and reconsidered her options, with science-based and mathematics-based degrees attracting her attention. Ultimately, a career in biomedical engineering called, prompting her to choose a Bachelor of Engineering at Griffith as her first step.
Innovation calling
“I didn’t necessarily want to become a doctor or a surgeon but
Griffith in elite eight to contest inaugural women’s rugby sevens
Opposition from New Zealand, Fiji, England, Ireland and Brazil will keep Griffith graduate Shannon Parry on her toes this weekend at the HSBC Sydney Sevens.
And more top class rugby sevens competition on home soil awaits the Rio gold medallist later in 2017 with the inaugural National University Sevens Series announced yesterday by the ARU.
“The more high-grade competitions we have up and running, the more our national team will be kept in good stead going forward,” the Pearls star said.
“More importantly, the universities competition will open up pathways for grassroots rugby and give young women the chance to play a sport that is still generally male-dominated.”
Griffith University is one of eight teams named by the Australian Rugby Union to compete in the National University Sevens Series. Teams from NSW, South Australia, Tasmania and ACT will compete with three Queensland teams.
Director of Griffith Sports College, Duncan Free OAM (pictured), welcomed the announcement following
Quantum RAM: modelling the big questions with the very small
When it comes to studying transportation systems, stock markets and the weather, quantum mechanics is probably the last thing to come to mind.
However, scientists at Australia’s Griffith University and Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University have just performed a ‘proof of principle’ experiment showing that when it comes to simulating such complex processes in the macroscopic world quantum mechanics can provide an unexpected advantage.
Griffith’s Professor Geoff Pryde, who led the project, says that such processes could be simulated using a “quantum hard drive”, much smaller than the memory required for conventional simulations.
“Stephen Hawking once stated that the 21st century is the ‘century of complexity’, as many of today’s most pressing problems, such as understanding climate change or designing transportation system, involve huge networks of interacting components,” he says.
“Their simulation is thus immensely challenging, requiring storage of unprecedented amounts of data. What our experiments demonstrate is a solution may come from quantum theory,
Leave Year 1 testing to the teachers
Testing students isn’t always the answer for improvement according to Griffith University education lecturer Dr Georgina Barton.
Commenting on the Federal Government’s call for Year 1’s to be tested on their literacy skills, Dr Barton says teachers know what makes a good reader and “we should trust their professional judgement”.
“Firstly, there’s a huge body of evidence that highlights the benefits of play-based and imaginative approaches to learning for young students,’’ she said.
“Students of this age will be at quite diverse stages of development. For example, six months difference in age can result in children being at extreme levels of readiness and/or reading levels. It’s sometimes like comparing apples with oranges.”
She said children are already being over-tested in schools purely for accountability purposes so a lot of data is already being collected.
“But it’s not always the right data and sometimes it’s just the same type of test over and over.”
Reading development
“Reading involves
Women’s AFL under research spotlight
Griffith University researcher Dr Adele Pavlidis has been awarded a $20,000 grant to research the Women’s AFL competition which began its inaugural season last weekend.
She says it’s important not to make assumptions about women’s strength and skills at this early stage and they should be judged on their merits and not compared to the men’s game.
“Some of the rules changes, for example, how the chest area has been made sacrosanct, needs to be further justified. This wholesale rule change will alter the way the game is played with no medical reason.”
She will interview administrators and players over coming months, as well as analysing media coverage of the sport.
“My research aims to support the long-term sustainability of women’s sport both at the grassroots and professional levels.
“Long-term sustainability means there are opportunities for women to influence and shape the future of sport, and that equality and inclusion are top of the agenda.”
Dr
Great Barrier Reef building coral under threat from poisonous seaweed
World-first research on the Great Barrier Reef has shown how ‘weed-like’ algae will kill vital coral because of increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.
The Griffith University study, conducted in collaboration with national and international experts in reef and chemical ecology, showed that if the world continues with ‘business as usual’ CO2 emissions, important reef building corals will suffer significantly by 2050 and die off by 2100.
Associate Professor Guillermo Diaz-Pulido from Griffith’s School of Environment says it is because algae will compete for space with corals in the reef, much like a weed, and eventually take over.
Researchers knew increased CO2 had an effect on seaweed behaviour but have now been able to demonstrate how this happens. They discovered this is due to an increase in the potency of chemical compounds that poison corals.
“This is a major step forward in understanding how seaweeds can harm corals and has important implications for comprehending
Griffith graduate painting the town red
Queensland College of Art graduate Anna Vu is lighting up the city with her latest work – a series of vibrant drawings projected onto Brisbane’s William Jolly Bridge.
The works are part of the Brisbane City Council’s BrisAsia festival, which celebrates traditional and contemporary Asian art and culture.
Anna, also known as AMA, is an internationally renowned street artist, who spends most of the year on the road.
After the BrisAsia team spotted her work on Instagram, she was invited to project her vivid sketches onto local landmarks as part of BrisAsia and the Brisbane Street Art Festival.
“I’d never worked with projections before – most of these sketches were originally tiny pieces that could fit on the back of an envelope,” she said.
“It’s certainly the most public exhibition of my work so far!”
Anna has strong ties to the region – her family hails from Vietnam and China, although she was born in Australia.
“I think a