Professor Stuart has made seminal contributions to understanding how information is processed by individual nerve cells in the brain. He developed and implemented techniques for making electrical recordings from the fine processes of nerve cells called dendrites. These techniques, which are used throughout the world, led to a series of classic papers describing the initiation and spread of nerve impulses in different nerve cell types. He is a world expert on the physiology of dendrites and co-edited the first book devoted exclusively to this subject. He continues to make outstanding contributions to our understanding of information processing in the brain.

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Professor Carbone has made a number of critical discoveries on the nature of immunity, specifically defining the function and behaviour of key cells involved in the response against infection. He has identified mechanisms by which the immune system identifies pathogens and the means by which effective immunity is generated to control these agents. He has developed a versatile range of biological tools for the study of immune components that have proven indispensable to the field. Overall, he has made significant practical and conceptual contributions to the advancement of our understanding of the immune response in health and disease.

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Charles Mackay’s early work established new paradigms for lymphocyte migration, particularly pathways for the migration of naïve and memory T cells. This work has important implications for understanding immune responses, and the structure and rationalisation of the immune system. Charles Mackay also made important contributions in the fields of chemoattractant receptors. He discovered human eotaxin and CCR3, which facilitate eosinophil migration to tissues. He also characterized the expression, function, and role in HIV entry of several chemokine receptors, including CCR5, CXCR4 and CC3. He is an internationally recognised authority on chemoattractant receptors, and their use as targets for anti-inflammatory therapy.

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Patrick Tam is a world leader in the understanding of early mammalian embryonic development. He pioneered novel embryological and genetic manipulation techniques to study the formation of the basic body plan during embryogenesis and the causes of birth defects using mouse genetic models. A significant achievement of his research is the elucidation of the blueprint of development in early mouse embryos and the construction of a complete fate map for the mouse embryo at gastrulation. It is now possible to trace the developmental history and the lineage relationship of any particular group of cells that contribute to the formation of a specific fetal organ or body part.

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Peter Koopman is one of Australia’s leading developmental biologists. He is perhaps best known for his role in the discovery of the SRY maleness gene, resulting in 4 Nature papers and regarded as a major breakthrough in molecular genetics. He has continued to discover genes with important roles in development and disease, generating a stellar oeuvre of more than 200 research and conference papers cited more than 5000 times in the literature. Professor Koopman is an energetic spokesperson for Australian science, with outstanding contributions to editorship of international journals, organisation of international meetings, public engagement, teaching and peer review.

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Ian Hume is a nutritional physiologist who has made major contributions to the digestive physiology of domestic sheep and wild mammals. These include omnivorous bandicoots, leaf-eating possums and gliders, hindgut fermenting wombats, and foregut fermenting kangaroos. His 1982 monograph was the first synthesis of the marsupial field and stimulated much further research, much done by him and his students. This provided for the physiological base for ecological and behavioural studies, and provided the framework for conservation of several endangered marsupial species. His 1999 monograph is a masterly synthesis of marsupial nutrition and has confirmed him as world leader in comparative physiology.

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Allen’s early work culminated in the demonstration that intracellular calcium was the central regulator of activation in the heart. From these fundamental findings, Allen elucidated the role of calcium in the cardiac length-tension relation, unravelled the role of calcium in cardiac ischaemia and identified a new pacemaker current that regulates the heart rate. These studies have become part of the mainstream of cardiac physiology and have been extensively utilised by the pharmaceutical industry in the design of drugs to increase cardiac output and to ameliorate the effects of ischaemia. In parallel studies of skeletal muscle, Allen established that muscle fatigue is primarily caused by failure of intracellular calcium release and the work has contributed to the demise of the lactic acid theory of fatigue. Most recently Allen has discovered that the muscle damage is a consequence of calcium entry through a stretch-activated channel. In a major development with possible therapeutic implications, he has shown that this channel is also important in muscular dystrophy and drugs that block this channel are able to reduce muscle damage.

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Trevor Lamb has made major contributions to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which light absorption triggers a neural signal in retinal photoreceptors. He invented the method for recording electrically from isolated photoreceptor cells and discovered rod responses to single photons; he developed a mathematical description of the molecular steps involved in activation; he accounted for light adaptation; and he has provided a molecular description of dark adaptation and retinoid recycling. His accomplishments have been recognised by the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics (1980), election as a Fellow of the Royal Society (1993), and the Alcon Research Institute Award (2003).

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Cook is a leading international figure in research on exocrine epithelia. He has made many important contributions to the understanding of the role of ion channels in exocrine gland function, but is particularly known for his more general discovery that epithelial Na+ channels and other transporters are regulated by the intracellular concentrations of Na+ and CI-. Prior to Cook's work, epithelial Na+ channels had been thought to be regulated by the extracellular concentration of Na+. In an elegant and technically impressive series of studies, he showed that these channels were in fact regulated by intracellular Na+ and CI- and elucidated the molecular mechanisms underlying these regulatory systems. His work has led to an important new model for the understanding of how the concentrations of ions such as Na+ and CI- are maintained stable within the cytosol, a model with important implications for the understanding of epithelial function both in health and in disease states such as hypertension and cystic fibrosis. His other major contributions include the demonstration that respiratory pathogens such as influenza virus inhibit the Na+ channels in lung epithelia and the discovery of a novel cytocortical clock that regulates the activity of K+ and CA2+ channels during the cell cycle.

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Perry Francis Bartlett, through his discovery of stem cells in the developing and adult brain of mammals and his recent successful isolation and characterisation of this stem cell, provided the first definitive evidence of the adult brain's capacity to produce new neurons, which has led to a fundamental change of view about the brain's capacity for repair and plasticity. Also, it has allowed the verification of his earlier prescient proposal that stem cells in the brain are pluripotent. Other major discoveries in developmental neurobiology include defining the regulatory actions of FGF-2, LIF and the p75NGF receptor.

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