Early Career Research Showcase
Latest Abstracts
The latest ECR Showcase abstracts are available here.
2008 Abstracts
| Rola Ajjawi | Education for clinical reasoning capability |
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| My PhD research explored how experienced health professionals learned to make clinical decisions and learned to communicate these decisions. I developed an educational model that can help promote novice practitioners' clinical reasoning in the workplace environment. Since my PhD 2 years ago I have developed and delivered a new unit of study in the Master of Medical Education on promoting clinical reasoning and been involved in the University of Sydney Medical Program review by developing a model of case-based learning in the clinical years to replace problem-based learning. | |
| Manish Arora | Health Effects of Environmental Toxicants |
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I graduated with a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2006. I was awarded an Early Career Development Award which allowed me to undertake postdoctoral fellowship training at the Harvard School of Public Health. At present, I am a lecturer at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Sydney, and a visiting postdoctoral scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.
My primary area of interest is the impact of environmental pollutants on health, particularly oral health. I am currently working on three international projects. In Mexico, I am using laser ablation technology to map the spatial distribution of toxins in the growth rings of deciduous (milk/baby) teeth as a novel approach to measuring intrauterine exposure to environmental toxins. Results from my studies in the US, have shown that environmental pollutants are linked to the most common chronic disease in American children - paediatric dental caries. Finally, in Sweden, I am undertaking a study to understand how genetic and environmental factors explain the link between tooth loss and cancer. | |
| Deborah Barton | Directing plant growth: a role for microtubules? |
| The way in which we utilise plants in agriculture forestry and natural ecosystems has serious impacts on Australia's economy and the way we live. Every plant cell is surrounded by a rigid cell wall predominately composed of cellulose the most abundant biopolymer on earth and a potential energy source for biofuels. Microtubules tiny highly co-aligned cylindrical filaments lying within the cell act as tracks for the directed production of cellulose in the cell wall. Using high resolution scanning electron microscopy I am investigating the mechanisms that cause these microtubules to be co-aligned how they guide cellulose production and so through their influence on cellular expansion and division the ways in which they can direct plant growth. | |
| Katherine Bode | What have statistics got to do with English? |
| Katherine Bode is an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in the English Department. Her research investigates the critical potential of quantitative methodologies for literary studies. | |
| Clare Corbould | Race, Nation and Diaspora in the Making of Harlem |
| My research has focused on urban and African-American history. I use a mix of intellectual and cultural history methodologies to examine politics culture and ideas in 1920s and 1930s Harlem. I have found -- contrary to the usual stereotypes about the insularity of Americans -- that black Americans have long looked beyond the borders of the United States in the formation of politics and identity and for the creation of culture. I have published the findings of this research in articles book chapters and a forthcoming book (_Becoming African Americans_ Harvard University Press 2009). | |
| James Curran | Sharing a joke with your computer |
| My work involves designing computational systems capable of understanding and manipulating the structure and meaning of natural languages, like English and Chinese. This is a grand challenge of Artificial Intelligence. I will talk about how ambiguity, the anathema of computational linguists everywhere, makes language funny, but hard to process automatically. I'll also show examples where we're automatically discovering the meaning of words and text, and where this is being used in the real world. | |
| Kate da Costa | Drawing the Line: The archaeology of Roman provincial borders |
| My overall research interests are the relationship of indigenous cultures and a foreign political power in ancient times: I am currently investigating an aspect of the Roman Empire in the Near East. I have a field work based project in northern Jordan to develop an archaeological methodology to detect the line of a provincial border. The administration of the Empire allowed it to last 700-1000 years but nowhere in the Empire is it possible to draw an accurate border line between provinces which were the basic administrative unit. This project's methodology will be applicable across the Empire. | |
| Karen Gonsalkorale | Scratching beneath the surface: Implicit biases in stereotyping and prejudice |
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Prejudice remains an intractable problem in society. To understand this issue, previous researchers have studied the causes and consequences of overt forms of prejudice. My research focuses instead on biases of which people may be unaware, that they may not explicitly endorse, and that they may prefer not to have. I draw upon social psychological methods to measure these implicit biases and examine their effects on behaviour. My findings indicate that implicit biases are widespread and can lead to discriminatory behaviour toward members of other groups.
After completing my PhD at the University of New South Wales in 2005, I worked for two and a half years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Davis. I am currently a Lecturer in the School of Psychology. My research interests lie in the areas of social psychology, stereotyping and prejudice, attitudes, intergroup processes, and social exclusion. | |
| Jeff Holst | The role of amino acid transport in prostate cancer |
| Dr Jeff Holst (BSc Hons UTS PhD UNSW) is Associate Faculty at the Centenary Institute. Dr Holst undertook postdoctoral research at St Jude Children's Research Hospital in the USA (2003-2006) before returning to Australia where he received a Cancer Institute NSW Fellowship (2006-2009) for his work with Professor John Rasko. Complex signals within all cells in the body help to control the way cells grow and the amount of nutrients that are available for the cell. Cancers require an increased blood supply to deliver oxygen and nutrients to grow and over the last decade attempts have been made to reduce the cancer's ability to induce blood vessels but very little attention has been paid to the idea of blocking the cancer's ability to increase its nutrient uptake. We are examining the role of one of these 'protein pumps' that is dramatically increased in prostate cancer and may be responsible for increasing nutrient uptake in the cancer cells. One particular nutrient that this pump regulates is involved in the signalling pathway inside prostate cells that control cell growth and so may be involved in the development or progression of prostate cancer. | |
| Toby Hudson | Simulation in Materials Chemisty |
| My research involves the theory and computer simulation of materials, concentrating on issues of structure, stability, mechanisms for crystal growth and relaxation, and Monte Carlo simulation methodology. I completed my PhD in materials science at Oxford in 2004, and have since done post-docs at Oxford and Sydney. I began a lectureship this year in the School of Chemistry. | |
| Andrew Kemp | Towards a better understanding of depression heterogeneity and response to treatment |
| My research activities have been acknowledged at a national and local level including an NHMRC postdoctoral research fellowship (2005-2009) an NHMRC project grant (2007-2009) and an academic promotion to Senior Research Fellow in 2007. My research seeks to clarify depression heterogeneity and identify clinical psychometric neurogenetic and neuroimaging markers of depression and predictors of antidepressant response. | |
| Arlie Loughnan | How do we know when someone is non-responsible? |
| My research examines the issue of non-responsibility in criminal law. Non-responsibility refers to those defendants charged with criminal offences who have a substantive impairment of the standard cognitive and volitional capacities which ground findings of criminal responsibility. The existing literature on this issue - which traverses the fields of law, criminology, psychiatry, history and sociology - indicates that the condition of non-responsibility is a status (a pre-existing and static state of affairs) and that it determined on the basis of expert legal and expert medical knowledge in the trial process. By contrast, I argue that criminal non-responsibility is contingent and fungible and that the process by which it is determined that a defendant is non-responsible must be understood across the terrain of both expert (legal and medical) and lay knowledge. The term lay knowledge is here understood as the socially ratified attitudes and beliefs about madness held by non-experts. It is only with this broader and more nuanced approach to non-responsibility that it is possible to thoroughly understand ascriptions of non-responsibility in criminal law practices. | |
| Greg Madsen | How Does Our Galaxy Work? |
| I completed my PhD at the University of Wisconsin in 2005 before moving to the Anglo-Australian Observatory. This year I was awarded a University Fellowship at the Institute of Astronomy. My research interests are in understanding the interstellar medium of our Galaxy using novel spectroscopic instrumentation. I will discuss some of the big open questions in my field and will describe efforts to answer those questions using a new survey telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. | |
| Chris Maloney | Developmental Origins of Health and Disease - Nutritional Programming of Obesity and Diabetes |
| I received my BMedSc (Hons 1) in 1999 and my PhD in 2004, both from the University of Sydney. My Honours investigated gene expression regulation of the beta globin locus and my PhD involved research into nutritionally programmed genes in offspring of the low protein rat model. I worked for 3.5 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland, continuing my investigations into the mechanisms of nutritional programming during gestation. I am currently a research fellow at the Institute for Obesity, Nutrition and Exercise (IONE). My research interests are centred on the 'fetal programming of adult disease'. The question I am seeking to answer is 'How is it that poor maternal nutrition during gestation can permanently alter the developing offspring so that it is predisposed to develop diabetes, obesity and other components of the metabolic syndrome'. This has lead me to investigate both, what is it in the diet that can programme and to study epigenetics, in particular DNA methylation as a means of permanently altering gene expression and hence metabolism. | |
| Karl Maton | Creating A New Theory in Knowledge and Education: LCT |
| Karl Maton is the author of legitimation code theory a sociological framework for the study of social fields of intellectual and educational practice. This builds on the approaches of among others Pierre Bourdieu Basil Bernstein and critical realism. It is being used by scholars and PhD students in Australia the UK France Singapore and South Africa and in a number of current interdisciplinary research projects. | |
| Tara Murphy | Here today, gone tomorrow: exploring the transient radio sky |
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We tend to think of the radio sky as relatively unchanging
on human timescales. However this is largely due to the
limitations of our telescopes in detecting transient sources - astronomical
objects that appear, disappear or change on short timescales.
Wide field imaging with the next generation of radio telescopes,
currently being built in Western Australia, will open up a whole
new parameter space for discovery.
As well as being scientifically interesting, this also presents IT challenges due to the massive
data rates involved.
I am an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow, working in the School of IT and the School of Physics. My work covers a range of topics at the intersection of IT and astronomy. | |
| Penny O'Donnell | The media and listening practices |
| I co-convene the ARC Cultural Research Network's The Listening Project with Dr Tanja Dreher (UTS) and Dr Justine Lloyd (Macquarie). Our research explores the politics, technologies and practices of listening. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges of the digital media revolution is the struggle to be heard over the cacophony of online media voices. There are at least two dimensions to this problem: first, media resources are unevenly distributed world-wide and, second, global mainstream media narratives and images systematically ignore or misrepresent many people, countries/regions and even religions. The Internet may well be a technology with global reach, but e-media, e-business and e-culture have a long way to go before they could be called truly multicultural. Media sociologist Nick Couldry says the West's privileged position in global media 'makes it hard for us to imagine it from other, less privileged positions'. A focus on listening offers a means of shifting our analysis of media practice to the 'other' side. | |
| Joy Paton | Seeking Sustainability: On the Prospect of an Ecological Liberalism |
| This doctoral research developed a conceptual framework for 'ecological political economy' (EPE) and used that framework to critically analyse different strands of liberalism as paradigms for sustainability. Currently, these EPE concerns are being extended to China in the context of its convergence with capitalist economies. | |
| Camille Raynes-Greenow | Linked data to answer questions concerning stillbirth |
| Dr.Camille Raynes-Greenow is an epidemiologist and an NHMRC postdoctoral fellow at the Kolling Institute Northern Clinical School. Her main research is in improving the health and well-being of mothers and babies and she uses epidemiological methods to research pregnancy and events around birth. The focus of her postdoctoral research is the investigation of stillbirth using linked population health datasets. Stillbirth remains a major dilemma despite significant advances in obstetrics. Linking population-health datasets is a powerful way to examine the total burden of disease in the population. | |
| Renae Ryan | Neurotransmitter transporters: vacuuming the brain |
| Cells in the brain use chemical messengers for communication. The levels of these chemicals need to be tightly regulated or the message they are trying to transmit will get lost in the noise. This housekeeping role is performed by proteins called transporters, which act like a vacuum to clean up the messengers. My research aims to understand how these transporters work in the normal brain and what happens when the 'vacuum cleaner' breaks down in diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia. | |
| Charles Wolfe | Materialism encounters the problem of Life: Monsters Organisms and Brains |
| I work in the history and philosophy of the life sciences with a focus on materialism mind/body relations and early modern biological thought. I've edited a book on 'monsters and philosophy' just finished putting together a volume on 'medical vitalism in the Enlightenment' and am working on a book on Materialism and the Self. | |
| Michele Zappavigna | Enacting Reconciliation: Negotiating Meaning in Youth Justice Conferencing |
| I am a postdoctoral research fellow in Linguistics working on a four year ARC-funded project exploring the discourse of NSW Youth Justice Conferencing. Youth Justice Conferences are meetings of young offenders and their victims in the presence of a moderator and support people held as an alternative to sentencing in the Children's Court. While studies of the outcomes of conferencing show a significant reduction in recidivism little work has been done on the process of this form of restorative justice. The project undertakes a multimodal analysis of conferences that we have video recorded adopting the social semiotic perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics to range across discourse semantics phonology and gesture. | |