von Itzstein named as Federation Fellowship winner

Only one biotech luminary, drug discovery researcher Prof Mark von Itzstein, made the list the list of 11 Federation Fellowship winners announced this week by Health Minister Brendan Nelson.

The Federation Fellowship grant will further von Itzstein's work on using novel carbohydrate-based chemical entities as cancer inhibitors.

Currently director of the Griffith University Centre for Biomolecular Science and Drug Discovery, von Itzstein collaborated in the successful development of anti-flu drug Relenza. The first anti-viral drug discovered in Australia to be approved for the treatment of influenza in Australia, Europe, USA and Japan, it led to von Itzstein being awarded an Australia Prize in 1996.

The group of 11 new winners brings to 25 the number of fellowships awarded this year. Each will receive an annual salary of $225,000 for five years.

The fact that he was the only biotech researcher among the second tranche of recipients should not be read as an indication the sector is not receiving its due share of official attention, von Itzstein said: "This is all done on a merit base, and I'm sure if there were 11 people in biotech [who met the merit criteria] they would have all got up."

The fellowships were initially designed to attract expatriate Australian researchers back to their home country and to stop promising researchers from leaving for overseas.

Of the 25 awarded this year, only 30 per cent have been won by expats, a ratio that has attracted criticism from observers such as Alex Reisner, editor of The Funnelled Web, who notes it "clearly has not attracted a swarm of expats to return."

von Itzstein said the fellowship was not awarded to prevent him from being lured offshore. "I have key collaborators overseas but there is certainly no intonation [in the award of the fellowship] that I was going to depart the country," he said.

Others in the latest group of recipients were:

• Prof Hugh Durrant-Whyte (The University of Sydney). Project: Information fusion in autonomous systems
• Dr Ronald Ekers (CSIRO - Australia Telescope National Facility). Project: A clearer view of the evolving universe
• Prof Terence Hughes (James Cook University). Project: Science for sustainable management of coral reef biodiversity: a multi-disciplinary approach to global-scale processes and patterns
• Prof Graeme Hugo (The University of Adelaide). Project: The new paradigm of international migration to and from Australia: dimensions, causes and implications
• Prof Yuri Kivshar (The Australian National University). Project: Nonlinear photonics and all-optical technologies
• Prof Trevor Lamb (The Australian National University). Project: The first stage of vision: transduction and adaptation in retinal photoreceptors
• Dr Catherine Stampfl (The University of Sydney). Project: Application of first-principles theory in condensed matter physics, surface physics, chemistry, and engineering: coatings, catalysis, and devices
• Prof David Trimm (CSIRO - Petroleum Resources). Project: The conversion of remote location natural gas to fuels and chemicals
• Professor Rodney Tucker (The University of Melbourne). Project: Towards an all-optical internet
• Dr Simon Turner (Macquarie University). Project: The time scales of geochemical cycles and earth processes