Prestigious fellowship for regenerative medicine researcher
Dr Nicolas Plachta
A Monash researcher’s work to understand how embryos form has been commended with a prestigious fellowship.
Dr Nicolas Plachta from EMBL Australia and the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University is one of just three researchers in Australia to be recognised by the Sylvia and Charles Viertel Charitable Foundation this year.
The foundation’s Senior Medical Research Fellowships acknowledge outstanding researchers who are medically qualified or graduates of another scientific discipline, with recognised postdoctoral achievements seeking to establish a research career in Australia and undertake research in an Australian academic institution.
The fellowship, which includes $1,225,000 in funding, will allow Dr Plachta to use advanced live imaging technologies to discover how single cells activate different genetic programs and how they regulate their shape.
Dr Plachta, who joined Monash in 2011, will undertake broad research to understand how single cells in the body choose their fate, shape, and the way they interact with other cells. Currently the mechanisms that control these decisions are unknown.
Dr Plachta said he was delighted to be selected by the Viertel Charitable Foundation.
“It is crucial that young researchers are given support at the start of their careers and I am thrilled that the foundation has selected me. Their support will give me the freedom to conduct ambitious long-term research that would otherwise be very difficult to fund,” he said.
“I hope that by understanding the dynamics of how cells function in vivo will ultimately make it possible understand why embryo deformities occur – something we know very little about at present,” Dr Plachta said.
Dr Plachta, Professor Ryan Lister from the University of Western Australia Lister and Dr Marc Pelligrini from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research are the three recipients of this year’s Sylvia and Charles Viertel Charitable Foundation Senior Medical Research Fellowship.