Dr Rohan Baker received a PhD in 1988 from the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University. It was here that he discovered and analysed a gene sequence for human ubiquitin. Ubiquitin is a small protein that serves as a universal signal for the degradation of other proteins to which it is attached. He has continued to research the ubiquitin pathway since then.
Dr Moira O’Bryan, despite her youth, has already made a major contribution in the area of molecular reproduction and endocrinology. She started her career at St Vincent’s Hospital, in Fitzroy, Melbourne, working on the characterisation of an immune regulator in the male reproductive tract, and its effect on infertility.
Dr Joel Mackay studied organic chemistry at the University of Auckland, receiving a BSc and an MSc. In 1990 he won a Commonwealth Scholarship to study at Cambridge University, where he looked at the mechanism of the action of antibiotics at the molecular level. Having received his PhD from Cambridge in 1993, Dr Mackay worked for a year as an experimental scientist at the CSIRO Food Research Laboratory.
President of the Australian Academy of Science 1990-94.
Dr Kristen Bremmell received a PhD from the University of Newcastle in chemical engineering. Her doctoral studies investigated the fundamental nature of chemicals used in treating industrial wastewater.
After finishing her PhD, she was a research fellow at the University of Melbourne in the Particulate Fluid Processing Centre, where she worked on a project involving alumina industry tailings.
Patricia Woolley was born in 1932 in Denmark, Western Australia. After she earned a BSc from the University of Western Australia (1955) she continued working there as a research assistant to Professor Harry Waring, investigating marsupial biology. Her lifelong interest in dasyurid marsupials began at this time.
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