Recognition for contribution to neuroscience
A Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) researcher has been honoured by a highly respected neuroscience award for her early postdoctoral work.
Dr Wendy Imlach, who heads the Pain Mechanisms Lab in the Monash BDI’s Neuroscience Program, has won the Australasian Neuroscience Society’s (ANS) 2018 AW Campbell Award. The award recognises the best contribution by a member of the Society during their first five postdoctoral years.
The ANS is one of Australasia’s largest biomedical societies and is the peak neuroscience body in Australia and New Zealand.
Dr Imlach was presented the prize at the society’s Annual Scientific Meeting at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on Wednesday 5 December. The four-day convention is one of the largest annual biomedical conferences held in the Australasian region, attracting up to 700 delegates.
Dr Imlach began her post-doctoral career investigating motor neuron disease looking at sensory motor circuitry and how it goes wrong in the disease. She identified the faulty part of the circuitry using Drosophila (fruit flies), which was confirmed in mouse models before her findings were translated into human trials testing a drug that improved motor function in disease models. Dr Imlach was at Columbia University, New York, at the time.
This body of work, and later research at two Australian universities, led to her current research at the Monash BDI, which focuses on the activity of neural circuits in the spinal cord in chronic pain states. Chronic pain affects an estimated 20% of people in Australia and one in three Australians over the age of 65. Dr Imlach aims to find new drug targets allowing the development of better pain therapeutics.
“The common theme of my research since finishing my PhD has beenspinal circuit activity and what goes wrong in a pathological state,” Dr Imlach said.
Dr Imlach received prize money of $500 and a contribution towards travel expenses to Brisbane. She will also present the AW Campbell Plenary at the ANS meeting in Adelaide in December 2019.
“It is nice to be recognised by the Australian neuroscience community and I feel very lucky and grateful to receive this award” Dr Imlach said.
“I think it shows the rest of the neuroscience community that we’re doing really interesting, cutting-edge research at the Monash BDI,” she said.
“Being offered the opportunity to deliver the plenary talk at the conference next year is definitely the best part of the award.”
The A.W. Campbell Award commemorates the eminent Australian neurologist whose book Histological studies on the localisation of cerebral function in 1905 founded cerebral cytoarchitectonics (the cellular composition of a bodily structure or cytoarchitecture).
Won by luminary researchers in the past, the prize is acknowledged within the neuroscience community as a pointer to up-and-coming leaders in the field in Australia.
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.