The WANMAs earmark funds targeting the health and medical research sector.
Eight Edith Cowan University (ECU) researchers have earned grants totalling $800,000 in this year's WA Near Miss Awards (WANMAs).
The WANMAs are sponsored by the Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund, a Western Australian government-backed scheme, which earmarks funds targeting the health and medical research sector.
Thirty-nine Western Australian scientists in total have picked up the funding, in two categories: early and mid-career grants, and Investigator grants.
Successful projects from ECU's Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute (NHIRI) include those of Dr Lauren Blekkenhorst, Dr Syed Zulqarnain Gilani (also from the School of Science), Professor Gina Trapp, Dr Cassandra Smith and Dr Liezhou Zhong.
From the Centre for Precision Health (CPH), Dr Pauline Zaenker and Dr Aaron Beasley secured funding, as well as Dr Xingang Li (formerly an ECU postdoctoral fellow, now an adjunct).
Each successful applicant has received $100,000, to be used to develop individual projects centring on health and medicine.
Within the NHIRI, Dr Blekkenhorst works broadly on nutrition. Her WANMA project concerns the role of cruciferous vegetables as part of a heart-healthy diet. Dr Gilani's work aims to advance the applications of explainable artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms in the field of medical science; his project will examine how to detect abdominal aortic calcification with explainable AI.
Professor Trapp is Professor of Food and Nutrition Environments; her area of expertise lies in combatting childhood obesity and poor nutrition in schools. Dr Smith, a postdoctoral research fellow, will explore cardiovascular disease screening during bone density testing. Dr Zhong, also a postdoctoral fellow, works on how new food processing technologies such as 3D food printing can improve human nutrition and health. His project seeks to investigate new approaches to improve the health and wellbeing of people eating texture-modified food.
The two CPH recipients investigate cancer, honing in on identifying immune markers (antibodies) from the blood that predict whether a melanoma patient is going to respond to immunotherapy and whether they are likely to suffer severe side effects (Dr Zaenker), and using tiny fragments of tumour DNA found in a patient's blood to predict which cancer treatments are most likely to work, detect treatment resistance earlier, and identify the spread of cancer before it is visible on scans (Dr Beasley).
Dr Li's research project broadly concerns using advanced artificial intelligence to analyse biological data from an Australian ageing study.
Securing WANMA funding is seen as a pathway to strengthening the competitiveness of candidates, helping them to secure further prestigious grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund, and the Australian Research Council.
The initiative forms part of the WA Grant Success Framework, which aims to "support a coordinated, evidence-informed, statewide approach to grant competitiveness".
"The WANMA program forms a key part of the FHRI Fund's broader strategy to build research capability, strengthen the pipeline of talent and ensure Western Australia remains at the forefront of health and medical innovation," Western Australian Medical Research Minister Stephen Dawson said.
The WANMAs showcase the high-quality, innovative and competitive work being accomplished by ECU scientists, underscoring the strength and resilience of ECU's health and medical research capability.
