Valued at a total of $440,000, the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre Inspiration Awards 2022 will support five cutting-edge research projects.
Now into their third year, the Inspiration Awards are designed to support new and exciting projects that do not fit the traditional grant schemes.
Projects are required to align with the Wal-yan Centre’s aims, have a multidisciplinary approach and include researchers from more than one team in the Centre.
This year’s awards program attracted 11 strong applications from Wal-yan Centre researchers, all of which were assessed by an independent panel of reviewers from The Kids Research Institute Australia, the University of Western Australia and the Department of Health. The panel included early to mid-career researchers, providing a valuable opportunity to gain experience on grant review panels.
The five successful research projects will focus on:
- development of a mix-and-read assay (laboratory test) for detecting multiple viruses and bacteria in just minutes
- testing whether clusters exist in the blood immune cells collected from children during wheezing and asthma, to guide early identification and treatment of children at high-risk of developing persistent respiratory exacerbations
- development of software that can automatically analyse the data generated by the wearable electrical impedance tomography belt – a tool used to monitor lung function in real time
- understanding how allergies interfere with the immune system’s ability to fight viruses in children and contribute to asthma development, and
- establishing how climate change has altered Aboriginal child health over the last 30 years, with the aim of using this information to help protect Aboriginal children from future environmental health risks.
Congratulations to the following award recipients (pictured left to right):
|
Chief Investigator |
Project Title |
|
Patricia Agudelo-Romero |
MEDUSA: A Mix-and-rEad assay for rapid Detection of respiratory virUSes and bActeria |
|
Laura Coleman |
Personalised gene expression clusters to guide early identification and treatment of children at high-risk of developing persistent respiratory exacerbations |
|
Yuliya Karpievitch |
Easy and accurate lung function monitoring at home and in remote areas with electrical impedance tomography |
|
Jonatan Leffler |
Mapping the contribution of plasmacytoid dendritic cells to virus-induced asthma exacerbations in atopic children |
|
Peter Le Souef |
Protecting Aboriginal children from environmental health risks |
The scientific investment for these grants is thanks to a powerhouse partnership between The Kids Institute, Perth Children's Hospital Foundation and Perth Children's Hospital.