Big bucks for Oz fellows

The winners of this year's National Health and Research and Medical Australia Fellowships - worth $800,000 each year over four years - have been announced.

The recipients are:

• Professor Doug Hilton from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Hilton's work covers how the body's cells communicate with each other. His fellowship will assist him in research into the molecular basis for the onset and progression of cancer and other diseases.

• Professor David Vaux from La Trobe University. Vaux is a leading researcher in the field of apoptosis, or cell death. His fellowship will assist him to expand his groundbreaking research, which may lead to the development of new cancer therapies

• Professor John Hopper from the University of Melbourne. Hopper is a world leader in genetic epidemiology, investigating links between genes, the environment, and breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and prostate cancer. His fellowship will assist him in his research aimed at preventing these leading causes of death.

• Professor Andreas Strasser from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Strasser's fellowship will assist him to further develop his research identifying the processes by which anti-cancer therapy triggers apoptosis.

• Professor James Paton from the University of Adelaide. Paton's fellowship will allow him to accelerate his research into new generation vaccines and therapeutic approaches for bacterial infections such as Pneumococcal, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Escherichia coli.

• Professor Alan Cowman from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Cowman is a world renowned malaria researcher. The fellowship will advance his work in designing new treatments and vaccines.

• Professor Tony McMichael, a reseacher into environmental epidemiology from the Australian National University, who will use his fellowship to further his research on the health risks of global climate change and environmental influences on infectious and parasitic diseases and autoimmune disease.

• Professor Sam Berkovic from the University of Melbourne. Berkovic will use his fellowship to work on the integration of high level clinical medicine, molecular genetics and cutting-edge neuro-imaging in the causes and treatment of epilepsy.

• Professor Ian Hickie from the Brain & Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney. His fellowship will allow him to expand his population-based research and development of mental health strategies on the importance of environmental factors such as infection, inflammation and alcohol and substance abuse exposure on the risk of developing non-psychotic mental disorders.