The Mollie Holman Medal was established in 1998 and is named after the late pioneering physiologist, Emeritus Professor Mollie Holman AO, in honour of her significant contributions to science and education. Each year, a maximum of 10 medals are awarded to doctoral students, who have fulfilled their degree requirements and presented their faculty’s best thesis of the year.
The nominees are:
Samantha completed her PhD in 2023 under the supervision of Professor Doug MacFarlane, Professor Jenny Pringle and Dr Karolina Matuszek. Her research focused on the application of organic salts as phase change materials (PCMs) for renewable energy storage applications. As part of a linkage project, Samantha’s research was both fundamental and applied. She used a variety of analytical techniques to probe the structure-property relationships governing the thermal properties of PCMs and used the findings to guide the design of new high-performing materials. Working closely with an industry partner, Samantha developed methods for accelerated thermal stability testing of the top-performing materials to indicate their possible lifetimes in renewable energy storage systems. Samantha currently works as an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, where her research focuses on the development of organic ionic plastic crystals for green energy applications.
Jack completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Bob Wong. His thesis was titled 'Behavioural variation and environmental change: Understanding how ecological conditions mediate animal personality traits. Jack's PhD research program made a major contribution to our understanding of the development and evolution of animal behaviour, and provided key insights into how changing environmental conditions can influence behavioural variation in a wide variety of species. Jack currently works as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
Yousef completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor Peter Cawood in 2023. Yousef’s research focuses on tectonic reconstruction using the sedimentary archive of sedimentary basins from the Archean to the present. He uses detrital minerals and bulk-rock geochronology and geochemistry to unravel the links between the source region and depositional basin of sediments. His thesis was titled 'Application of multi-mineral detrital provenance to unravelling sediment recycling, tectonic events, and palaeogeography in northern Gondwana'. Yousef is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment.
Ben completed his PhD under the supervision of Andrea Collevecchio. Ben's research lies at the intersection between probability, analysis and mathematical physics. He worked on problems related to long-memory processes, systems of interacting particles, mixing time for Markov chains, Potts models, and the geometry of Nash Equilibria in random games. Ben’s thesis contains a novel connection between game theory and statistical mechanics. This bridge between the two subjects is far-reaching and, in the short term, attracted the attention of eminent mathematicians.
Mike completed his PhD under the supervision of Ilya Mandel. His thesis was titled ‘ Interactions in Stellar Binaries’. Mike’s research at Monash displayed remarkable breadth and depth and made a very significant contribution to our understanding of common-envelope evolution. Mike currently has a fellowship at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Science in Germany.
Ru Wei completed her PhD under the supervision of Professor Adeline Ting Su Yien. Her thesis was titled 'Profiling the bioactivities of fungal endophytes from Orcidaceae'.