$1.6 Millon Health and Medical Research Funding for University of Wollongong
The Australian Government is providing $1.6 million in new health and medical research funding to the University of Wollongong.
View by date:
Previous MinistersJoint Release
The Hon Nicola Roxon MP
Minister for Health and Ageing
Sharon Bird MP
Member for Cunningham
29 October 2009The Rudd Government is providing $1.6 million in new health and medical research funding to the University of Wollongong.
The funding, part of a $500 million government investment into the future health and wellbeing of all Australians, will be provided through the National Health and Medical Research Council.
NHMRC is the Commonwealth’s Government’s peak funding body for health and medical research. It selects projects for funding from among a large number of applications.
This funding will enable researchers at the university to contribute to the Government’s health reform agenda to improve the health of all Australians.
The research produced will enable us to better understand, tackle and even prevent chronic disease and other health problems in the future.
The largest slice of the overall funding has gone to Project Grants, which support individuals and teams conducting research into all areas of health. Project Grants received by the University of Wollongong include:
New therapeutics to fight Strep A flesh eating bacteria – group A streptococcus causes 600,000 cases of serious invasive disease each year world wide, and approximately 25% of cases are fatal. Dr Martina Sanderson-Smith’s research team will receive $503,500 to investigate the mechanisms behind these severe infections, to improve future treatments.
Schizophrenia: prevention of treatment-related obesity – newer antipsychotics, used to treat mental illness, are effective but can lead to side effects of obesity and metabolic disorders. Professor Xu-Feng Huang will look at the mechanisms that lead to these problems and ways of minimising them, using funding of $399,250.
Remodelling damaged peripheral nerves – the current treatment for incapacitating nerve damage is the replacement of the damaged nerves with healthy nerves from elsewhere in the body. This research investigates the possibility of using man-made implants that protects the damaged nerve while it regenerates, reducing the need for nerve harvesting while restoring nerve function. Associate Professor Robert Kapsa has been funded $662,500 to carry out this important research.
This round of funding also includes NHMRC’s Project Grant, Enabling Grant, Partnership for Better Health Grant, Standard Equipment Grant, Fellowship and Career Development Award schemes.
For more information on the funding schemes, and a full list of successful projects, visit www.nhmrc.gov.au
Media contacts: Minister Roxon’s office, 02 6277 7220
Carolyn Norrie, NHMRC, 0422 008 512 or 02 6217 9190
Help with accessing large documents
When accessing large documents (over 500 KB in size), it is recommended that the following procedure be used:
- Click the link with the RIGHT mouse button
- Choose "Save Target As.../Save Link As..." depending on your browser
- Select an appropriate folder on a local drive to place the downloaded file
Attempting to open large documents within the browser window (by left-clicking)
may inhibit your ability to continue browsing while the document is
opening and/or lead to system problems.
Help with accessing PDF documents
To view PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, you will need to have a PDF reader installed on your computer. A number of PDF readers are available through the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) Web Guide website.