March 12, 2026
The Society’s 2025 Awards for Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers were presented at a ceremony kindly hosted by the University of Sydney on the evening of Monday, 9 March 2025.
The evening was introduced by Professor Louise Sharpe, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Researcher Training) and Emeritus Professor Christina Slade FRSN, President of the Royal Society of NSW, who presented the awards. Renowned ABC science journalist and presenter of the ABC Science Show, Robyn Williams AO FRSN, interviewed each of the award winners after their brief presentations.
Those presenting were:
- Dr Yunlong Qiang, University of Sydney (Jak Kelly Award) — Novel Soliton Solutions: Uncovering the mysteries of higher order dispersion
- Ms Eilish McMaster, University of Sydney (Scholarship Winner) — Combining spatial, genetic, and environmental risk data to define and prioritise in situ conservation units
- Ms Isabelle Nicolas, University of Sydney (Scholarship Winner) — Balancing legal privilege with anti-money laundering obligations
- Mr Amir Tourani, Western Sydney University (Scholarship Winner) — Sick of bad dates? Try sensing their microbiome! Heritable endosymbionts change the chemical profiles of male thrips, allowing females to choose compatible partners
- Dr Christopher Whyte, University of Sydney (Scholarship Winner) — Constructing a computational bridge between neurobiology and psychology
- Dr Adrian Lee, Westmead Institute for Medical Research (Early Career Researcher Citation) — Unravelling the pathogenesis of Sjögren’s disease from bedside to bench
- Dr Jiayan Liao, University of Technology Sydney (Early Career Researcher Citation) — Lighting up disease: How nanoscale light is changing the way we detect illness
- Dr Brandon Munn, University of Sydney (Early Career Researcher Citation) — Multiscale coordination of brain activity unifies theories of neural coding
Further information about the presenters and their talks is available from the website event notice.
A gallery of images from the occasion is available from the preceding link.
