NSW govt awards aim to reverse the 'brain-drain'

Garvan Institute neurobiologist Dr Bryce Vissel is one of the first recipients of the NSW government's inaugural BioFirst Awards.

The awards are part of the NSW government's $68 million BioFirst strategy to build up the state's biotechnology industry and provide $100,000 per year for three years to entice researchers to return from overseas to work in Australia.

The award is intended to provide a "top-up" to a package offered by publicly funded NSW research institutions, to encourage overseas-based researchers in the biotechnology sector to continue their research in NSW.

"This is about keeping, attracting or winning back the best minds - scientists who would be working at leading institutions in Europe and North America," Premier Bob Carr said, announcing the awards.

"Under this plan, we will see the best minds in Australia embarking on research here, creating more jobs and attracting more investment."

Dr Vissel, who returned to the Garvan only a few weeks ago, said that the award made it possible for him to return to Australia, after working at the prestigious Salk Institute in San Diego for eight years.

Vissel said that his research, which uses mouse models to study fundamental mechanisms underlying learning and memory, drug addiction and neurodegenerative disorders like Huntington's and Parkinson's, was expensive to set up.

"I had been trying to come back for a while. This award was a top-up, but it made it viable for me to come here," he said.

He said that he hoped that the BioFirst award and others like it would encourage more Australians to return here to do research.

"There are other people overseas still and they are keen to come back. As you get more senior, the gap becomes bigger," Vissel said, adding that it would be great if Australia could start poaching foreign scientists in the way that Australian scientists have been wooed to work overseas.

Three other BioFirst Awards were announced at the same time, going to Dr Colin Dunstan at the ANZAC Research Institute, Dr Peter Currie at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and Dr Perry Gustafson at the Wagga Wagga Agricultural Institute.

Dunstan and Currie are both expatriate Australians, while Gustafson is an American-born scientist recruited to boost NSW's strengths in the agricultural biotech sector.