Mollie Holman Medal

This prize is awarded to students across the University who have fulfilled the requirements of the Doctor of Philosophy, met an overall level of excellence, and whose work has been judged as the doctoral thesis for that year. This award is proudly supported by Monash University.

Moore Zhe Chen

Dr Zhe (Moore) Chen completed her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at Monash University under the supervision of Associate Professor Angus Johnston and Dr Daniel Yuen. Her research focused on the development of targeted lipid nanoparticle delivery platforms at the interface of nanotechnology, protein engineering, and therapeutic development.

During her PhD, Moore developed innovative strategies for targeted delivery by integrating molecular design, chemical conjugation, and functional validation in animal models. Her work contributed to precision delivery approaches for immune and cancer-related applications, leading to multiple research outputs and intellectual properties in nanomedicine and targeted delivery.

She is currently continuing this line of work within the Johnston group, contributing to efforts to advance these technologies toward clinical application in collaboration with industry and academic partners. She leads a team further developing a targeted lipid nanoparticle platform with optimal orientation control, establishing an integrated workflow spanning target identification and receptor validation, nanobody discovery and engineering, LNP formulation optimisation, and functional evaluation of targeted LNPs in relevant biological systems.

Moore completed her undergraduate studies in China before undertaking a Master of Biomedical Science at The University of Melbourne, where she developed chemical probes for early diagnostics in neurodegenerative diseases.

"This is a great honour to accept this award. I’m deeply grateful to my supervisors, my team, and the department for their support and encouragement throughout this journey. I feel very fortunate to work at the interface of science and application."