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Two of Australia's top 10 health and medical researchers, recognised yesterday at the National Health and Medical Research Council's Excellence Awards, are from The University of Western Australia.

UWA's Professor Grant Waterer and Associate Professor Wendy Oddy were presented with their awards at a ceremony in Canberra last night.  They were identified as among the top 10 of almost 5,000 researchers nationally who applied for NHMRC funding this year.

UWA Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Robson, said the NHMRC's endorsement of the University and its researchers was acknowledgment of the University's achievement of excellence on both the national and international stage.

"We congratulate our medical researchers for their personal achievements and also because their work leads to outcomes that will improve the lives of people everywhere," Professor Robson said.

Associate Professor Oddy won a NHMRC Achievement Award for Career Development in Population Health Research. She has a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and a PhD in epidemiology.  Her project investigating the links between nutrition and child development was chosen as one of ‘Ten of the Best' in 2006.

Associate Professor Oddy is a Senior Research Fellow at the UWA-affiliated Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.

Professor Waterer won a NHMRC Achievement Award for Career Development in Clinical Research.  His primary research interest is in pulmonary infectious disease, especially pneumonia, from immunological and microbiological perspectives and he is co-author of a critical study of Australia's public health response to the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

Professor Waterer is Head of the UWA School of Medicine and Pharmacology's Royal Perth Hospital Unit, Head of Infectious Diseases at the Lung Institute of WA and a member of the Cooperative Research Centre for Asthma and Airways and the Centre for Asthma, Allergy and Respiratory Research.  He is also an adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University, Chicago.

The awards follow NHMRC funding of more than $9 million for 55 UWA and UWA-affiliated projects this year.  The funding for these 55 projects will total $27.3 million over five years.

Media references

Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716