Australia-Harvard Fellowship Awards for 2020

March 15, 2019

 

The HCA Foundation is proud to recognise four outstanding researchers to become the 2020 Australia-Harvard Fellows. The Fellowships recipients will be contributing to the advancement of scientific research in Australia, and to the enhancement of the links between Harvard University and Australian Academic Institutions.

 

The four 2020 Fellows are:

·     Dr. Yu Shrike ZHANG, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Medicine, Harvard Medical School;
and Director, Laboratory of Engineered Living Systems, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

·     Dr. Yang TENG, Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital; and Associate Professor of Neurosurgery Harvard Medical School & Brigham and Women’s Hospital

·     Dr. Joyce Bischoff, PhD, Professor of Surgery, Vascular Biology Program,
Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School

·     Dr. Karol MILLER, PhD, Winthrop Professor,
Faculty of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of Western Australia

These awards take to 78 the total number of Australia-Harvard Fellowships granted since the program’s inception in 2004. Harvard Club of Australia Foundation congratulates these 2020 recipients and offers heartfelt thanks to our volunteers involved in selecting, monitoring and administering the program. 

 

Professor Yang (Ted) TENG

Prof TENG is a leading authority on rehabilitation of neurotrauma. His expertise spans a variety of approaches, including stem cell biology, neural & glial biology, chemical & genetic engineering, molecular pharmacology, and neural oncology.

 

He will be visiting the Gold Coast Centre for Orthopaedics Research, Engineering and Education (GCORE), Menzies Health Institute Queensland at Griffith University to work with Prof. David Lloyd.

 

The focus of the collaboration will be on investigating how Buspar, a drug used as a “serotonin agonist”, can be used in combination with functional electrical stimulation (FES) and machine-driven neurorehabilitation system to treat people with cervical spinal cord injuries.

 

 

Professor Yu Shrike ZHANG

Prof ZHANG’s research focuses on 3D bioprinting, including organ-on-a-chip, biomaterials, regenerative engineering, bioanalysis, nanomedicine, and biology.

 

He will be visiting the Charles Perkins Centre Node in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Sydney to work with Prof. Anthony Weiss
on a project involving microfluidic vascular bioprinting: using 3-D printing technology to create artificial small-diameter vascular grafts.

 

Professor Joyce BISCHOFF

Prof Bischoff studies the role of endothelial cells and pericytes in various settings of vascular disease and in the normal repair of the vasculature.

 

She will be visiting the David Richmond Laboratory for Cardiovascular Development at Sydney’s University’s Centenary Institute to work with Dr Mathias Francois.

 

The focus of their collaboration is on investigating the specific mechanism of action of “propranolol”, a key treatment for Infantile hemangioma, with the aim of improving treatment options for this condition (and potentially other vascular tumours).

 

Professor Karol MILLER

Prof. Karol Miller is the world’s most frequently cited researcher in the area of biomechanics of the brain.

 

He will be visiting the Surgical Planning Laboratory and the Computational Radiology Laboratory at Harvard University.

 

He will also visit Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence research groups at MIT and deliver lectures and seminars at the Harvard Medical School and at other Universities in the Boston area.

 

The primary aim of Prof. Miller’s visit will be on enhancing the collaborative relationships between the researchers at his UWA lab and various Boston based research groups, with a particular focus on improving the efficacy and efficiency of image-guided neurosurgery.