High achievers honored in Research Australia Awards

A private philanthropist who has personally donated in excess of $60 million to health and medical research in the past few years and an Australian researcher who led the invention of a vaccine that could save 20,000 lives every year are among the award recipients to be honoured at the Research Australia Awards presentation last night.

The awards were presented at Government House in Sydney by the NSW Governor, Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC CVO.

The Great Australian Philanthropy Award was awarded to Mr Greg Poche AO, for his astonishing generosity in support of health and medical research programs.

This has included a donation of $41 million to Sydney's Mater Hospital to establish a centre for research and treatment of melanoma, two separate $10 million donations to establish Centres for Indigenous Health at the University of Sydney and the Flinders University, $1 million for research on indigenous eye health at Melbourne University and continuing donations of $700,000 per year to fund specialised training for doctors working to treat melanoma.

The Griffith University Discovery Award was awarded to Dr Mark Pearson for his ground-breaking work inventing and developing a vaccine against Schistosoma mansoni, a parasite that infects as many as 200 million people every year in developing countries.

Currently around 20,000 people die every year from these infections. The vaccine developed by Dr Pearson and his team will soon commence clinical trials and has the potential to save all these lives.

The Chair of Research Australia, Dr Christine Bennett, used the occasion of the ceremony to highlight the extraordinary quality of Australia's health and medical researchers and to call on governments, philanthropists and industry to further invest in this crucial work.

"These award recipients are outstanding, but they are only the tip of the iceberg. We have research talent in Australia of a calibre the equal of anywhere in the world," Dr Bennett said.

"Our research efforts in Australia, built up over a decade of funding growth provide a solid foundation to build further success by attracting researchers to Australia from overseas and to further build our reputation as a leading research nation."

Dr Bennett said comprehensive public opinion research commissioned recently by Research Australia showed extraordinary levels of public support for better funding of health and medical research* - 81 per cent ranked it very or extremely important.

"People rated it an issue of higher importance than refugee policy, carbon pollution reduction, reducing government debt and even economic management. It's a top order priority for the Australian public," Dr Bennett said.

"The research shows serious illnesses affect the majority of Australian families in one way or another. People feel very strongly the need to drive development of better treatments and cures.

"The work of health and medical researchers, saves lives, provides relief for the seriously ill, reduces the burden on our public health system and can make a huge economic contribution when medicines and products developed here are exported to the world.

"Investment in it makes medical, public health, humanitarian and economic sense. As a community comprising government, industry and as individuals, we have enormous opportunities to further develop our research capacity," Dr Bennett said.

Provided by Research Australia