Associate Professor Hayley Christian, Dr Nicole Hill, Dr Rachael Zemek and James Hill
Four The Kids Research Institute Australia researchers from a diverse range of fields have been named as finalists for the prestigious 2022 Premier’s Science Awards.
Associate Professor Hayley Christian is a finalist for the HBF mid-career Scientist of the Year award for her work to promote better physical and mental health outcomes for children through a physically active childhood.
Associate Professor Christian, who is also a Senior Research fellow at The University of Western Australia and a Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow, heads a multi-disciplinary team that is working to develop the best environments, policies and programs to enable children to be active for lifelong health.
Her research focuses on physical inactivity and its contribution to poor health outcomes including one of the biggest health challenges of our time, obesity.
Emerging cancer researcher, Dr Rachael Zemek, and mental health researcher, Dr Nicole Hill, have both been named as finalists for the Woodside Early Career Scientist of the Year.
Dr Rachael Zemek is a Forrest Prospect Fellow at The University of Western Australia and Raine BrightSpark Fellow working in the Sarcoma Translational Research Team at The Kids Research Institute Australia. She has a strong focus on developing new immunotherapy treatments for Sarcoma – a cancer affecting children and young adults.
Dr Zemek’s work has made breakthrough discoveries to advance our understanding about why some cancers do not respond well to immunotherapy and has identified effective new drug combinations to improve responsiveness to immunotherapy.
A Forrest Prospect Fellow at The Kids Research Institute Australia and The University of Western Australia, Dr Nicole Hill is one of Australia’s leading experts in suicide prevention, working to reduce the number of lives lost to suicide by improving equitable access to services and helping young people and their families who have been bereaved by suicide.
Dr Hill’s research has attracted international attention, applying robust methods to transform the approach to suicide clusters among young people.
The Kids Research Institute Australia Mental Health researcher and PhD student, James Hill, is a finalist for the Shell Aboriginal STEM Student of the Year.
A Ngarrindjeri man, Mr Hill is a PhD student at The University of Western Australia and The Kids Research Institute Australia, investigating how stigma impacts on poor mental health outcomes of trans and gender diverse young people.
He is the first Aboriginal man to undertake a PhD in Psychology at The University of Western Australia and continues to be a role model to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in the field.
The 2022 Premier’s Science Award winners will be announced at a ceremony on August 15th during National Science Week.
Read more about the awards here.