Hypertension awards for PhD students
Two PhD students from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s (BDI) Department of Pharmacology were honoured at the High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia (HBPRCA) meeting late last year.
Tara Scott, from the cardiovascular and pulmonary pharmacology group, co-headed by her supervisor Associate Professor Barbara Kemp-Harper, received the Student Oral award for her presentation titled ‘Targeting the NLRP3 inflammasome for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension’. She was also selected as the American Heart Association (AHA) nominee, enabling her to travel to the AHA Hypertension meeting in the United States in September. She also received a cash prize.
“Receiving this prize was such a great honour, being able to present as an invited speaker at an international conference is a great privilege, it will be an amazing experience and certainly not something I expected to happen so early in my career, I’m pretty blown away to be honest!” Tara said.
“I definitely could not have achieved this without the support of two people in particular, my incredible supervisor Barb, and my amazing husband Neville for always believing in me,” she said.
Yan Wang, from the Widdop lab, received best student poster award at both the HBPRCA meeting and International Society of Hypertension conference in Beijing. Her poster was titled ‘Novel AT2 receptor agonists for the treatment of cardiac and renal fibrosis’. In both instances, Yan’s abstract was selected for presentation at the award session. She then had to provide a three minute presentation of the work and answer questions about the presentation and her data.
“I’m very glad that my PhD research is recognised by professionals in this area and these awards encouraged me to continue working hard on it,” Yan said.
The High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia has been at the forefront of research into the causes, prevention and treatment of high blood pressure since its inception in 1979. With national and international leaders in cardiovascular research as members, the HBPRCA fosters young careers by building links between peers and senior members.
Congratulations to both Tara and Yan on their achievements.
About the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute
Committed to making the discoveries that will relieve the future burden of disease, the newly established Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University brings together more than 120 internationally-renowned research teams. Our researchers are supported by world-class technology and infrastructure, and partner with industry, clinicians and researchers internationally to enhance lives through discovery.