Content
USC research gains $1 million boost
The University of the Sunshine Coast is set to receive more than $1 million from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for two new research projects.
The funding was announced today by Federal Minister for Innovation Senator Kim Carr at a special ARC ceremony in Canberra.
Dr Kate Mounsey, 31, won a $375,000 competitive grant for her research into the contagious skin infection, scabies. Her study was one of only 277 projects selected from 2,159 applications nationally for funding under the ARC's new Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) scheme.
And Dr Scott Cummins, 35, was awarded a $656,377 ARC Future Fellowship for his study of primordial germ cell migration in perciform fish (the largest order of fish, including the most important food and game fishes).
Dr Mounsey, who currently works for the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, is seeking to establish an animal model of scabies to provide new insights on scabies immunopathology.
“Scabies is a poorly understood parasitic disease of medical and veterinary significance,” she said in her DECRA grant application.
“This project will use a world-first experimental model to investigate the progression of host immune responses in scabies, which will enable the development of new control strategies for this neglected disease.”
Dr Cummins, a Lecturer in Molecular and Cellular Biology, will investigate primordial germ cell migration in perciform fish to reveal new insights into the molecular basis of cell migration and chemosensory communication.
“Key residues needed for ligand-receptor binding and environmental impacts on migration will be investigated with valuable implications in reproductive developmental biology and applied science,” he said.
USC’s Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research Professor Roland De Marco congratulated both researchers on their outstanding ARC achievements.
“These grants are a clear sign of the high national and international standing of Drs Mounsey and Cummins,” he said.
“The DECRA scheme has been developed to support Australia’s most promising early career researchers, while the Future Fellowship program was created to provide opportunities for outstanding Australian mid-career researchers to conduct their leading-edge research in Australia.
“Winning these ARC grants is a huge achievement for USC. It is going to set us on a trajectory that will see us do more research, publish more ground-breaking research papers, and gain more competive research funding.
“This is really going to push things forward in a big way.”
— Terry Walsh