2023 AGW Fellowships
AGW is pleased to announce the 2024 AGW Fellowships awardees:
Amanda Wilkins
AMANDA WILKINS
Faculty of Medicine, School of Paediatrics - University of Melbourne
Amanda is a clinician scientist, trained as a general paediatrician and clinical pharmacologist. She is completing her PhD at University of Melbourne and her PhD research focuses on improving vancomycin use in young infants, an antibiotic used to treat life-threatening infections in babies. Amanda is currently employed as a consultant paediatrician at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne
The Barbara Hale fellowship will help fund a multicentre clinical trial to evaluate novel methods for therapeutic drug monitoring and dose adjustment of vancomycin, an antibiotic used to treat life-threatening infections in babies. This project has the potential to reduce morbidity and mortality and lead to further research using similar approach- es in older children and adults. Her first authored publication was published in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal and she has presented findings from her PhD research at two and one national conferences.
Laura Dowling
LAURA DOWLING
College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, School of Biomedical Sciences and
Pharmacy - University of Newcastle
Laura Dowling is a PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy. Laura received a first-class Honours degree in Biomedical Science at the University of Newcastle. Laura’s PhD project investigates gut metabolites and inflammatory responses in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). COPD is the third leading cause of death worldwide and 1 in 7 Australians over 40 years old are affected. Current treatment strategies alleviate symptoms and reduce exacerbations, but do not cure the disease.
The AGW Barbara Hale Fellowship will assist Laura to characterise the
metabolomics phenotype of COPD. This work will strengthen Laura’s doctoral thesis and teach her important research skills for future research in the precision and personalised medicine frontier.
Laura has published two peer-reviewed papers related to her PhD as first author and presented her research at the National (2024) and NSW branch (2023) meetings of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand.
Mia-Francesca Jones
MIA-FRANCESCA McAUSLEN (JONES)
College of Arts, Society and Education - James Cook University
Mia-Francesca Jones is a doctoral candidate at James Cook University studying the impact of the climate crisis on representations of the self in women’s autobiographical writing. Mia brings her background in literary publishing and as an award-nominated writer to identify emerging trends in contemporary creative nonfiction in a time of ecological upheaval.
Mia’s fellowship project includes research and professional development opportunities in Iceland. Mia will present at the International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide Conference at the Centre for Studies in Memory and Literature, connect with volcanologists at the University of Iceland, and access archival material at the Library of Water in Stykkishólmur. Mia will study the Library of Water’s unique collection of 24 cylinders containing Icelandic glacial water, building upon her recent research trip to the Haupapa/Tasman Glacier in New Zealand and collaboration with Dr Lauren Vargo at the Antarctic Research Centre.
Mia aims to obtain a vital intercultural perspective on the northern hemisphere’s cultural response to, and interpretation of, the way weather shapes lives, giving her PhD research global relevance.