Associate Professor Michelle Halls receives 2024 ASCEPT Achievement Award
Associate Professor Michelle Halls
3 October 2024
Monash University’s Associate Professor Michelle Halls has been awarded the 2024 Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists (ASCEPT) Achievement Award for her paradigm-shifting research into advancing understanding of signal organisation in cells.
The annual ASCEPT Achievement Award recognises a researcher who has made substantial scientific and service contributions to Australasian pharmacology over a sustained period, including leadership in the advancement and promotion of their area of research.
As the Head of Spatial Organisation of Signalling Laboratory within the Drug Discovery Biology Theme at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), Associate Professor Halls and her team are dedicated to exploring and understanding how GPCR protein complexes control compartmentalised signalling, how protein complex assembly imparts unique properties to GPCRs, and how this fine control can be dysregulated to contribute to disease progression.
Associate Professor Halls, who has been Chair of the Drug Discovery Special Interest Group for ASCEPT for the last two years, and was Secretary for the two years prior, said she is honoured to be recognised by her peers.
“It’s truly humbling to receive the 2024 ASCEPT Achievement Award and to be joining the list of fellow researchers who have also received it over the years, all of whom have made significant contributions to the scientific community” Associate Professor Halls said.
Associate Professor Halls is currently a Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellow and her laboratory at MIPS is at the forefront of state-of-the-art techniques to study the increasingly important field of regulation and compartmentalisation of signalling proteins.
She has also received many prizes and awards recognising the high quality of her scientific work and her outstanding ability to communicate her findings including the ASCEPT Denis Wade New Investigator Award (2010) and the 2023 British Pharmacological Society Geoffrey Burnstock Prize.
Additionally, throughout her career she has published 73 papers in top-class international peer-reviewed journals, attracting citations and invitations to write review articles.
Director of MIPS, Professor Chris Porter, said this award reflects Associate Professor Halls’ consistently high level of achievement.
“Michelle is an outstanding scientist and a broad contributor to her discipline. She is a very well deserved recipient of the ASCEPT Achievement Award and on behalf of MIPS, I would like to warmly congratulate her on this important accomplishment.”
ASCEPT is the professional and independent Society in Australia and New Zealand with expertise in the use and toxicity of medicines and chemicals.
ENDS