Four ECRs to watch in 2021

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November’s ECR Showcase event saw 12 of our best up-and-coming researchers take centre stage to share the work that is turning heads in their fields.

Here we meet the four winners and hear their showcase presentations.  Congratulations also to the other showcase finalists from across the University:

  • Sophia Aharonovich, Xu Daozhi (Faculty of Arts)
  • Cynthia Isley, Katherine Wongtrakul-Kish (Faculty of Science and Engineering)
  • Annika van Hummel, Magdalena Przybyla (Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences)
  • Hasnain Zaheer, Le (Lyla) Zhang, Macquarie Business School

Dr Noushin Nasiri, School of Engineering
Overall Winner and Winner – Faculty of Science and Engineering

This 2019 NSW Tall Poppy (and newly announced Superstar of STEM!) has had an impressive year. As head of the NanoTech Lab in the School of Engineering, she and her team are making incredibly exciting discoveries in nanomaterials and micro-devices that are set to have big impacts in areas like health, energy and the environment.

Noushin’s wearable sun exposure detector made big news earlier this year, and in the Showcase she presented another exciting innovation that has been years in the making – a breathalyser that could potentially detect diseases including cancer and diabetes in their earliest stages.


Dr Emma Burns, Department of Educational Studies
Winner – Faculty of Arts

Although Emma only commenced a as lecturer in educational psychology at Macquarie in February, she is off to a strong start. She was one of three early career researchers to receive a prestigious ECR Research Grant from the American Psychological Association and is currently a CI on an ARC Discovery Indigenous project.

Across these upcoming projects and her current work, Emma examines the nature of teacher-student relationships in secondary school and how teachers can use the curriculum to build positive relationships with and support the motivation of all students, and especially Indigenous students.


Dr Colin Zhang, Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics
Winner – Macquarie Business School

Dr. Colin (Jinhui) Zhang’s research areas include life cycle models, optimal control, financial strategy and derivative pricing.

In his showcase, Colin highlighted his research into Australian retirement villages, outlining the complex fee structures that can often confuse older Australians and inhibit them from making fully informed choices about their future.

Colin is a contributor to the Business School’s Retirement Village Calculator – a free online tool enabling seniors to compare different retirement village options and protect them from potentially devastating financial decisions.


Dr Kathleen Yin, Australian Institute of Health Innovation
Winner – Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences

A Research Fellow from the Centre of Health Informatics in the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Kathleen and her team have been investigating how to utilise video games to positively influence health.

Kathleen has been studying the holistic impact video games have had on human health during the COVID pandemic, identifying the potent power the medium had on supporting mental coping, socialisation, and maintenance of self-worth.

In 2021, she is looking to apply these findings to enable better design for consumer-facing health apps and explore the use of games as an innovative method to facilitate self-care in the community.

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