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Winner: Pall Thordarson Winner: Angela Moles Winner: Ben McNeil

Three Faculty of Science researchers have won Young Tall Poppy Awards, announced last night at a gala event in the NSW Parliament. The awards recognise young scientists who excel at research, leadership and communication.

The Faculty winners were Dr Pall Thordarson (School of Chemistry), Dr Ben McNeil (School of Mathematics) and Dr Angela Moles (School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences). Overall, UNSW researchers picked up more than other competing institutions with five - including two from the Faculty of Medicine - of the 13 awards.

Dr Thordarson, 37, was recognised for creating smart self-assembling materials aimed at more accurately delivering anti-cancer drugs to cells in the body and limiting their unpleasant side effects. If successful, this method for drug delivery could improve the survival rate and quality of life of chemotherapy patients.

"Designing and making self-assembled materials is still a challenge," says Dr Thordarson, who was born in Iceland. "We are also only starting to understand how these materials interact with living cells but this understanding will be essential for their use in medicine.

"At the core of our work is our desire to understand how self-assembly works - the very mechanism nature uses to build life - and if we can grasp its power we should be able to tackle some of the key medicinal and environmental challenges in our society."

An Australian Research Council Research Fellow, Dr Thordarson is one of Australia's most outstanding young scientists in the area of molecular devices and materials. His wide-ranging work, expertise and knowledge are highly regarded both nationally and internationally for its depth and novelty.

Dr Thordarson's work is part of a growing trend in chemistry and biomedical sciences to work with nature by mimicking biological systems perfected by evolution over millions of years.

The Nobel laureate Richard Feynman first raised the prospect of designing and building molecular machines nearly 50 years ago. Since then, Nobel laureates Jean-Marie Lehn, Donald Cram and Charles Pedersen have advanced scientific understanding of self-assembly and how it can be used to make self-assembled materials and devices.

Climate change scientist and policy analyst Dr Ben McNeil, 32, believes passionately that climate change is the most significant long-term challenge facing Earth.

As a scientist he is an expert in the role and impact on oceans of absorbing billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases. As a policy expert, he is an advocate of strategies aimed at the uptake of low-carbon energy technologies that he says will be essential in this "greenhouse century".

"Global greenhouse gas emissions hit 30 billion tonnes in 2006 and our oceans have absorbed 50 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted since the industrial revolution," says Dr McNeil, a Senior Fellow at the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre.

"Year to year variations in the ocean's ability to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide has significant implications on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Computer models that I have developed for the Southern Ocean suggest that this 'ocean carbon sink' will be vulnerable to climate change in the future from changes to solubility and oceanic circulation. If less carbon dioxide is absorbed, it will remain in the atmosphere, further fuelling and accelerating the greenhouse effect."

Australia is especially at risk from climate change because it is the world's driest inhabited continent. Changes to the nation's rainfall rate, water supply, extreme climatic events, sea-level rise and coral reef destruction would have dramatic and drastic environmental, social and economic implications.

Plant biologist Dr Angela Moles was recognised for her landmark botanical survey revealing new insights into how plants survive and thrive in 75 different ecosystems across the planet.

"You might think that scientists would know all about the different strategies that plants use when they grow in different places," says Dr Moles, 32, who is Deputy Director of UNSW's Evolution and Ecology Research Centre.

"Sadly, we know remarkably little. We don't know whether plants are taller in the tropics, or whether plants are more likely to have their leaves eaten by animals in warmer climates. Plants grow and reproduce in an amazing variety of ways. Some make seeds that weigh over 20 kilograms, while others make tiny, dust-like seeds. Some grow over 100 metres tall, while others creep along the ground. Some make leaves that are tasty and nutritious, while others contain deadly poisons."

Dr Moles collected information about the seeds of almost 13,000 plant species, discovering that seeds in the tropics are, on average, 300 times bigger than those in colder places. She has also assembled a database of the relative heights of about 22,000 plant species. The results of her World Herbivory Project are still being analysed.

Asked if she enjoyed travelling to such exotic locales, she says: "While this might sound like fun, the logistics of setting up 50 collaborations, employing and training a field assistant in each place, getting permits to study the plants and animals and export samples, and communicating with people in many different languages did make things fairly interesting!"

Her findings have important implications for understanding how plants and the animals that depend on them will be affected by climate change. For more on this story visit Faculty of Science News.

Contact:
UNSW Faculty of Science, Bob Beale - 0411 705 435