Photo of the week: 2016 AMREP student information night

180 students attended the 16 August 2016 AMREP information night to find out more about the precinct offerings from Central Clinical School, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, BakerIDI Institute and Burnet Institute. The students came from diverse undergraduate streams including human pathology, immunology, biomedical science, biotechnology and health sciences. It was a lively and enjoyable event with plenty of pizza!
See more:

• AMREP evening photo gallery
• AMREP evening video playlist - featuring CCS & SPHPM speakers
• CCS Honours projects booklet
• CCS Honours for prospective students web page

Photo of the week: 11 Aug 2016 CCS 3MT heat

Congratulations to Paddy Dempsey, BakerIDI, who has won the CCS 3MT heat and will be competing in the Faculty final next Friday 19 August at 1.30. His topic is "Breaking up prolonged sitting: Implications for prevention and management of Type 2 diabetes." Paddy is supervised by Dr David Dunstan, Prof Neville Owen, Dr Bronwyn Kingwell and Dr Julian Sacre. See more photos and links below.

Photo of the week: Welcome to our mid year Honours and graduate research students

Left: Recent graduate research intake: Ms Nazanin Karimnia, Mr Nikolce Kocovski, Mr Sudip Paul. Absent: Dr Joel Symons
Right: 2016-17 Midyear Honours students Mr Felix Lee, Ms Saffanah Zahra, Ms Paulina Pajak. Absent: Lorena Goldring

Welcome to our recently enrolled 2016-17 Midyear Honours students and graduate students! If you see them, say hello. They are:

Lorena Goldring

Joel Symons

• Mr Felix Lee, BMedSc Honours (ACBD), supervised by Prof Rob Medcalf
• Ms Saffanah Zahra, BMedSc Honours (ACBD), supervised by Prof Rob Medcalf
• Ms Paulina Pajak, Honours (Baker IDI), supervised by A/Prof Julie McMullen
• Ms Lorena Goldring, Honours (Immunology & Pathology), supervised by Prof David Tarlinton
• Ms Nazanin Karimnia, PhD student (Baker IDI),  supervised by Prof Sam El-Osta
• Mr Nikolce Kocovski, Masters student (Immunology & Pathology), supervised by Prof David Tarlinton
• Mr Sudip Paul, PhD student (Baker IDI),  supervised by A/Prof Peter Meikle
• Dr Joel Symons, PhD student (Anaesthesia & Perioperative Medicine), supervised by Prof Paul Myles

See more:

• Midyear Honours www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/education/2016-17-mid-year-honours-general.html
• Midyear BMedSc (Honours) www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/education/2016-17-mid-year-honours-bmedsc.html
• Graduate research students www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/education/hdr-resources.html

Congratulations to Drs Caroline Gurvich and Kiymet Bozaoglu on their platform grant success

Dr Caroline Gurvich, Research Fellow/
Clinical Neuropsychologist at MAPrc

Congratulations to Drs Caroline Gurvich (CCS) and Kiymet Bozaoglu (Baker IDI) who have been awarded Faculty Platform Access Grant (PAG) funding in 2016 for their project titled, "Too stressed to think clearly? How microarray gene expression profiling can inform us about stress and cognition". The funding will enable Drs Gurvich and Bozaoglu (who also received an EMCR AMREP seed funding grant for the same project) to access the Monash bioinformatics platform for bioinformatics analyses to understand which gene pathways moderate the stress-cognition relationship in their research on gene expression and stress. 

Congratulations to Shanzana Khan, CCS 3MT heat winner!

Congratulations to Shanzana Khan (Baker IDI), winner of the Central Clinical School's 3MT heat on Tuesday 4 August. Her topic was "The influence of Y Chromosome Lineage in determining vascular function, inflammation and blood pressure regulation". Shanzana's supervisors are Professor Jaye Chin-Dusting, Dr Amanda Sampson and Dr Karen Andrews. She will represent the school at the Faculty final on 21 August 2015.

Ashlee Conway (ACBD) was runner up and also people's choice for her lively presentation on the rare condition of porphyria attractively known as 'Dracula's Disease'.

Watch this space for video releases of the student presentations.

Congratulations to Prabhu Mathiyalagan on the award of his PhD!

Image: @prabhu_gene

Congratulations to Mr Prabhu Mathiyalagan, who has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Prabhu’s thesis, "Role of histone modifications and chromatin interacting non-coding RNAs in regulating cardiac gene transcription", was accepted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree by the Graduate Research Steering Committee on Tuesday 23 December 2014. Prabhu was supervised by Professor Assam El-Osta (BakerIDI) and he continues as a Postdoc in Prof El-Osta's lab. His interests include Epigenetics, Biotechnology, Heart disease and Diabetes.

Jay Jha is CCS's 20th PhD completion for 2014! Congratulations Jay!

Mr Jay Jha has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Jay did his research at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute. His research is on the complications of diabetes, especially in relation to kidney disease. Jay's supervisor is Professor Karin Jandeleit-Dahm.

Jay’s thesis is titled "Role of NADPH oxidases NOX1 and NOX4 in diabetic nephropathy: Genetic Deletion and Pharmacological inhibition studies" and was accepted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree by the Graduate Research Steering Committee on Tuesday 2 December 2014.

See more about Jay on his Student Profile.

Congratulations to our recently completed PhD students!

Congratulations to two of our PhD students who have recently been awarded their degrees.

Aislin Meehan

Aislin's thesis was entitled "Investigating the function of natural killer cells during Immunological responses following human lung transplantation" and her supervisors were A/Prof Glen Westall, Dr Nicole Mifsud and A/Prof Tom Kotsimbos (Department of Allergy, Immunology and Respiratory medicine).

Andris Ellims

Andris' thesis was entitled "Ventricular remodelling in cardiomyopathy - impact on ventricular physiology and cardiovascular outcomes". Andris's thesis was completed through the Department of Medicine. Andris was supervised by Associate Professor Andrew Taylor, Head of Clinical Imaging at BakerIDI.

Well done to our PhD graduates! 

Newsletter: Baker IDI Perspectives

The latest edition of Baker IDI Perspectives, which explores some of the challenges and opportunities that the proposed $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund presents, has just been released.

Link: http://www.bakeridi.edu.au/Assets/Files/No008%20Perspectives_FINAL.pdf. Hard copies are available at Baker IDI Reception, 75 Commercial Road, Melbourne 3004.

PhD profile: Nicholas Lam on how to regrow damaged heart muscle

Nick Lam has just completed his PhD thesis, which was investigating regrowing damaged hearts with muscle, instead of the body's own process of filling holes with scar tissue, the physiological equivalent of polyfilla. The title of his PhD is “Cardiac regeneration: effective nerve growth factor”. Basically it’s about the effect of a protein, called 'nerve growth factor', on a damaged heart. Nick was based in the Heart Failure Research Group at Baker IDI with one of his supervisors, Professor David Kaye. His other supervisor was Professor Nadia Rosenthal from Monash University. For more, see his profile.

Participants sought: Do you have Type 2 diabetes and sit for large portions of the day?

Scientists at the Physical Activity and Behavioural Epidemiology Laboratory, Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute recently discovered that breaking up prolonged sitting has important beneficial effects on glycaemic control in older adults. We now aim to further investigate this phenomenon in those with type 2 diabetes, who are likely to derive the greatest benefits. This research may ultimately lead to practical and feasible treatment and management strategies in those with type 2 diabetes.

Who can take part in this study conducted by the Baker IDI

Congratulations to PhD graduate Nick Lam on the award of his degree

Congratulations to Nicholas Lam, who has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Nicholas's thesis, "Cardiac regeneration: effect of nerve growth factor", was accepted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree by the Graduate Research Steering Committee on Tuesday 11 March 2014. Nicholas was supervised by Professor David Kaye, BakerIDI, who heads up the Heart Failure Research Group.

Yoga @ AMREP, coordinated by BakerIDI

Baker IDI has facilitated yoga classes for staff and students at AMREP at an incredibly good price with some wonderful instructors, and is now in a position to open this up to other AMREP staff and students.  Classes are held in the meeting room on the 7th floor, Baker IDI Tower on:

• Mondays 5.15–6.15pm (Joti) - email joti@naked-shaman.com phone: 0430 813 108
• Wednesdays 5.15–6.15pm (Lilly) - email:  lillianstesin@hotmail.com or phone: 0432 140 590

Central Clinical School publications 3 Dec 2013 - 7 Jan 2014

Central Clinical School (CCS) departments, centres, and associated institutes recorded 36 publications with CCS authors during the period 3 December 2013 - 7 January 2014. Publications are listed under the headings: ACBD, AIRmed, BakerIDI, Gastroenterology, Infectious Diseases, MAPrc, Medicine, NTRI, Surgery, and Neurosciences including the Van Cleef/Roet Centre for Nervous Diseases. See detail below. Links go to the Scopus abstracts with full bibliographical details.

Jay Jha: PhD research investigates diabetes and kidney disease

Jay is a PhD student at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute and his research is based on the complications of diabetes, especially in relation to kidney disease. Jay's supervisor is Professor Karin Jandeleit-Dahm. To read more about Jay go to: www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/education/profiles/jha.html