Dean's Awards for Excellence 2026 | MNHS

Excellence in Research

The Dean's Awards for Excellence in Research are awarded across nine categories:

  • Excellence in Research - Engagement and Impact
  • Excellence in Research - Enterprise
  • Excellence in Research - Commercialisation
  • Excellence in Research - Professional of the Year
  • Excellence in Research - Early Career Researcher of the Year
  • Excellence in Research - Graduate Research Supervision
  • Excellence in Research - Researcher of the Year
  • Excellence in Research - Team of the Year
  • Excellence in Research - Infrastructure

Watch the videos with our Award winners below.

Our Award Winners

  • Engagement and Impact

    Associate Professor Jane Tiller
    School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine

    Associate Professor Jane Tiller is a nationally recognised expert in ethical, legal and social implications of genomics. Her research has transformed Australian policy and advanced equitable access to genetic testing. Since 2016, she has led a sustained program of research, stakeholder engagement and policy translation that culminated in the passage of landmark Australian legislation in April 2026 prohibiting life insurers from using genetic test results in underwriting. This reform removed a major barrier to participation in genomic testing and research, and positioned Australia among the first countries to implement a comprehensive legislative ban. Jane has mobilised government, researchers, clinicians, consumer groups and more than 100 organisations behind a shared reform agenda, while maintaining an outstanding research record and national leadership profile. This award recognises her exceptional research engagement, collaboration, thought leadership and demonstrated impact on public policy, public health and genomic medicine in Australia.

  • Engagement and Impact

    Professor Jason Ong
    Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, School of Translational Medicine

    Professor Jason Ong is a globally recognised clinician-researcher whose work has transformed the prevention and control of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). He is Director of the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, Professor at Monash University, Vice-President of ASHM, and inaugural Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Sexual Health. Through a transdisciplinary approach that brings together communities, governments, healthcare providers, industry and international organisations, he has ensured that research is translated into policy and practice. His research has informed 225 policies globally, including seven WHO global recommendations, and has contributed to major regulatory, clinical and service delivery reforms that improve access to care for marginalised populations. He founded the Ending HIV Network Victoria, has advocated for over $113 million in national HIV funding, and leads initiatives that improve equitable access to HIV prevention and sexual health services. With 439 publications and extensive leadership across national and international advisory groups, Professor Ong has an exceptional record of research engagement, knowledge mobilisation, and demonstrable impact on health outcomes in Australia and globally.

  • Enterprise

    Professor Marie Yap OAM
    School of Psychological Sciences, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health

    Professor Marie Yap OAM is an internationally recognised research leader in parenting, prevention and youth mental health, whose work translates evidence into scalable digital supports for families. She leads the Parenting Strategies Program and Partners in Parenting (PiP), a suite of evidence-based interventions developed through systematic reviews, Delphi consensus, co-design and pragmatic trials. Professor Yap’s enterprise partnership with headspace National has progressed from the national launch of self-guided PiP in 2023 to a newly awarded Medical Research Future Fund Rapid Applied Research Translation grant to implement a world-first multi-level PiP system within eheadspace and develop a toolkit for scale-up across 150+ headspace centres. This model matches parents to self-guided, peer-coached or clinician-coached support according to need, and carries the potential to revolutionise family-inclusive youth mental health care in Australia. Marie’s record includes 144 peer-reviewed publications, over A$37M in research funding, a h-index of 49 and a 2025 Medal of the Order of Australia for service to psychology.

  • Commercialisation

    Team: Associate Professor Ross Dickins and Dr Ethan Oxley
    School of Translational Medicine

    Associate Professor Ross Dickins leads the Dickins Group - AML and Immunotherapy in the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases, in which Dr Ethan Oxley is a postdoctoral research fellow. In 2023, they co-invented an antibody-based biologic with a novel ‘double lock’ inhibitory mechanism that has therapeutic potential across many autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. With several Monash research platforms and Monash Innovation, Ross and Ethan optimised and patented these immunosuppressive antibodies and entered commercial negotiations with multiple venture capital firms and pharmaceutical companies. This culminated in a 2026 Licensing and Research Collaboration Agreement between Monash and a pharmaceutical company, which was among one of Monash's largest licensing deals.

  • Professional of the Year

    SPS Research Directorate Team
    Ms Sarah Oliver and Ms Sevim Zongur
    School of Psychological Sciences

    The SPS Research Directorate team is led by Sarah Oliver, Research Development Manager and Sevim Zongur, Senior Research Development Officer. The team have made outstanding contributions to the research ecosystem within SPS. They have demonstrated exceptional dedication, proactive problem-solving, and strategic foresight in supporting the academic community and playing a vital role in the reintegration of the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health as the research hub of the school. The team provides exceptional strategic pre and post award grant management, ensuring that our researchers can focus on innovation and scientific discovery. In addition to the cyclic funding calendar, the RD team were instrumental in the development of the Turner Institute Strategic Plan 2025-2028 engaging widely across the school and institute, working closely with academic staff and drawing on their collective knowledge of the school's research strengths to shape a clear, high-level framework. The team's exceptional performance is evidenced by the significant performance in research income across all categories of funding from 2021 to 2025. The team are complimentary in their skills with Sevim providing data-driven analysis of funding trends enabling Sarah to provide strategic review and foresight.

  • Early Career Researcher of the Year

    Dr Pok Man Leung (Bob)
    Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute

    Dr Leung is a Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute group leader of Microbial Ecophysiology and Genomics, leading a team of three PhD and two Honours students. His research program addresses how diverse microorganisms survive, interact, and in turn modulate their hosts, environments and Earth’s climate for the development of microbe-centric solutions to global challenges. At only 3 and a half years post-PhD, he has made exceptional achievements, from publications, funding acquisition, to leadership. He has published 35 peer-reviewed articles, all in Q1 journals, with 10 first/corresponding-author articles including in Science, Cell, Nature Communications and PNAS. The outstanding implications are reflected by >2400 citations, substantial media coverage, prizes such as the Mollie Holman Medal, CSL Prize, Discovery Best Publication and 13 invited presentations/seminars. He also secured >$1M of competitive funding as the lead CI, including ARC DECRA fellowship, Homeworld Garden Grants, JGI New Investigators, and MNHS ECP Fellowship.

  • Early Career Researcher of the Year

    Dr Louisa Picco
    Eastern Health Clinical School

    Dr Louisa Picco is an NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellow and Program Lead for Drug Policy and Harm Reduction at the Monash Addiction Research Centre. She has published >125 peer-reviewed articles, has a H-index of 40 and >5685 citations. Her work addresses a critical global public health challenge: opioid-related harms. She is recognised as a global leader in her work on prescription monitoring programs, positioning her as the second most prolific researcher in Australia and third globally for the SciVal topic ‘Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs and Opioid Management’. Her interdisciplinary research has directly informed clinical practice and shaped national and international strategies to reduce opioid-related harms. She has secured over $2.9 million in competitive research funding. Her leadership and contribution to research are exemplified by her recent Victorian Premier’s Award for Public Health Research (2024–25), highlighting her outstanding contribution to research and knowledge translation, relative to opportunity.

  • Graduate Research Supervision

    Professor Laura Jobson
    School of Psychological Sciences

    Professor Laura Jobson is a Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences and a registered clinical psychologist who leads the Culture, Trauma and Mental Health Research Group at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health. Her internationally collaborative research addresses PTSD and depression across cultures, partnering with refugee, humanitarian, Indigenous and culturally diverse communities. A former National Institute for Health Research Fellow and Tall Poppy awardee, she has produced more than 140 research outputs. She is an outstanding graduate research supervisor, independently nominated by two of her students: over the past five years she has supervised seven PhD students to completion as main supervisor and currently supervises thirteen, with excellent retention and sound completion times despite many clinical-program (challenging as they engage in coursework, clinical placements, and research all in the same time as research only PhDs) and international students. Her students describe timely, developmental feedback and a genuinely collaborative research community.

  • Researcher of the Year

    Professor Catriona Bradshaw
    School of Translational Medicine

    Professor Bradshaw is a clinician scientist and Head of Research Translation and Mentorship and the Genital Microbiome Innovation Group at Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, School of Translational Medicine and Bayside Health. She is an NHRMC Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science, and Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor. Her programme focuses on translational research to improve treatment and control of drug-resistant and refractory sexually transmitted infections, including Mycoplasma genitalium, bacterial vaginosis (BV), and interventions to optimise women’s sexual and reproductive health. She has a strong track record of translating findings into policy and practice with >400 publications, a h-index of 76 and around 22,000 citations. She is in the top 1 percent of researchers for scholarly output globally for M. genitalium, bacterial vaginosis and the vaginal microbiome and STIs (Scival). Her group recently completed the StepUp trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, representing the most significant advance in BV cure for decades, proving BV is sexually transmissible.

  • Researcher of the Year

    Professor Andrew M. Ellisdon
    Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute

    Professor Andrew Ellisdon is Head of the Structural Biology of Signalling and Cancer Laboratory in the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute. In five years, he has delivered landmark senior-author studies in Nature (2024), Cell (2026), Science Advances (2024) and Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (2021, 2022), defining how mTORC1 and related pathways control cell growth and drive cancer and genetic disease. His discovery of the cholesterol sensor LYCHOS was recognised in six editorials and among Monash's Top 10 discoveries in 2025. He holds an NHMRC Investigator Level 2 Fellowship (2027). He has secured more than $15M as lead CI and translated discoveries into first-in-class therapeutic leads. Professor Ellisdon co-founded the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s Career Development Committee and, from June 2026, became Deputy Head of Department, Research. He is nominated for field-leading breakthroughs in discovery science combined with outstanding leadership in developing early and mid-career researchers.

  • Researcher of the Year

    Professor Adeel Razi
    School of Psychological Sciences, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health

    Professor Adeel Razi is an outstanding and internationally recognised leader in computational neuroscience, with major contributions spanning generative brain modelling, psychedelics, NeuroAI and synthetic biological intelligence. He is Professor at Monash University’s School of Psychological Sciences and Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, with his laboratory based at Monash Biomedical Imaging, and Honorary Fellow at UCL’s Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging. Since founding his Monash laboratory in 2018, he has built a 25+ member highly interdisciplinary team. His work has appeared in Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Nature Communications, Neuron, PNAS and other leading journals, with more than 13,000 citations and an h-index of 52. He holds more than $19 million in active funding, including two Wellcome Leap projects, ARC Future Fellowship, ARC Discovery and ONI funding with industrial partner Cortical Labs. His international recognition includes CIFAR’s Global Scholar selection, an invitation to the World Laureate Forum and a keynote at the 2025 OHBM Annual Meeting. He also led the world’s largest psilocybin neuroimaging study and helped establish synthetic biological intelligence through the DishBrain project, which was recognised as the one of the top 8 discoveries of 2022 by The New Yorker. His research has attracted coverage from CNN, BBC, The Economist, The Guardian and multiple front-page features in The Age.

  • Team of the Year

    Genital Microbiome Innovation Group
    Professor Catriona Bradshaw, Dr Lenka Vodstrcil and Dr Erica Plummer
    School of Translational Medicine

    The Genital Microbiome Innovation Group comprises three women across a range of career stages with highly diverse and complimentary skills and expertise – clinician scientist, epidemiologist and bioinformatician. They have an international track record in genital microbiome, bacterial vaginosis (BV) and STI research, as the top-ranked most active researchers in the field in the region and globally, with over 100 co-authored publications in leading journals (i.e. NEJM/Lancet/Nature group), and invited national and international talks, reviews and editorials.The team recently completed the StepUp trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025, representing the most significant advance in BV cure for decades and proving BV is sexually transmissible. The StepUp trial is reshaping global management to include partners in treatment strategies for the first time. It represents a major paradigm shift in knowledge and is transforming clinical practice and global policy and guidelines.

  • Team of the Year

    Australia and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre (ANZIC-RC)
    Team leads: Professor Carol Hodgson, Professor Jamie Cooper
    School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine

    ANZIC-RC has made an extraordinary contribution to improving the outcomes of critically ill patients through world-leading research, exceptional collaboration, and a strong commitment to translating evidence into practice. The centre consistently demonstrates excellence by bringing together clinicians, researchers, statisticians, project managers and healthcare organisations across Australia, New Zealand and internationally to address some of the most important challenges in intensive care. Over the past year, ANZIC-RC has delivered impressive achievements, including leadership of numerous major clinical trials, securing more than $23 million in new competitive research funding, and publishing over 360 peer-reviewed papers. These accomplishments are remarkable not only because of their scale but because they directly contribute to better patient care. What sets ANZIC-RC apart is its culture of teamwork and shared purpose to improve patient outcomes. The Centre creates an environment where expertise is combined across disciplines, enabling innovative research that no single individual or institution could achieve alone. Its commitment to mentoring emerging researchers and fostering international partnerships ensures a lasting impact on both the critical care community and future generations of clinician-scientists.

  • Research Infrastructure

    Professor Ralf Schittenhelm
    Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute

    Professor Ralf Schittenhelm is an internationally recognised leader in mass spectrometry, proteomics and multi-omics research, and has directed the Monash Proteomics & Metabolomics Platform (MPMP) since 2016. Under his leadership, MPMP has grown from a small facility of three staff and two instruments into one of Australia’s leading omics platforms with 25 staff and 12 instruments, supporting more than 250 research groups and delivering nationally significant capabilities in proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, clinical proteomics and single-cell proteomics. Professor Schittenhelm has pioneered the adoption of emerging technologies and developed innovative bioinformatic tools that make advanced omics analyses accessible to the broader research community. His work has enabled discoveries across diverse scientific fields and contributed to high-impact publications in many of the world’s leading journals. Professor Schittenhelm is recognised for his exceptional leadership, commitment to innovation and transformative contribution to Australia’s research infrastructure, which has established MPMP as a globally respected centre for omics research and collaboration.