Every month we celebrate some of the impressive achievements in the Macquarie community. Got something to share for next month? Tell us.

Macquarie’s seven Eureka Prize finalists

Congratulations to all of our finalists who had had outstanding success in their respective areas and who have been nominated in the Eureka Prizes. The Eureka Prizes reward excellence in the fields of research and innovation, leadership, science engagement and school science.

Distinguished Professor Michelle Leishman and Distinguished Professor Lesley Hughes (main photo) with the Weed Futures team have been named as finalists for the 2019 NSW Environment, Energy and Science (DPIE) Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.

Associate Professor Joanne Jamie, Associate Professor Subramanyam Vemulpad and Dr Ian Jamie, have been nominated for the 2019 Department of Industry, Innovation and Science Eureka Prize for STEM Inclusion, along with Yaegl Aboriginal Elder Dr Uncle Ronald Heron, and Dr Danny Bedgood and Associate Professor Paul Prenzler from Charles Sturt University.

Professor Neil Saintilan of Macquarie University’s Department of Environmental Sciences has been shortlisted for the Eureka Prize for a second year running. In 2019 he has been shortlisted in Environmental Science, while in 2018 his work was recognised in the Mentoring of Young Scientists category. His success as a mentor is obvious from his latest nomination, which builds on the success of his former students. Three members of the team completed their PhD studies and postdoctoral research under Neil’s supervision.

Macquarie University Senior Lecturer in Applied Mathematics, Sophie Calabretto, is a finalist for the 2019 Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science. In 2017 Sophie was chosen as one of the ABC’s ‘Top 5 Under 40’ researchers, which gave her a platform to engage with the wider community.

In addition to her Eureka Award nomination (above), Professor Lesley Hughes has also been honoured with the 2019 Australian Museum Research Institute Lifetime Achievement Award.

Receiving her award in the Museum’s Long Gallery on 31 July, Professor Hughes spoke of her hope in the face of climate change.

Read Professor Hughes’ full speech >>

Congratulations to Dr Philippe Gilchrist and Associate Professor Melissa Norberg from the Department of Psychology who hosted a Visiting Scholar, UK PhD student Tess Langfield, in a specialist lab here on campus.

Tess won a USD$3000 award from the Health and Behaviour International Collaboration (HBIC) to investigate drinking behaviour using psychophysiological measures. This project builds upon her PhD research, which investigates the impact of glass shape on drinking behaviours for soft drinks.

Tess explains the project greatly benefited from Macquarie University’s state-of-the-art facilities and equipment (including a “bar laboratory”, situated in the MQ ‘Simulation Hub’, complete with a BIOPAC machine for measuring physiological responses).

The Department of Physics and Astronomy has received the Silver Pleiades Award from the Inclusion Diversity and Equity in Astronomy Chapter of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

The Pleiades Award recognises organisations in Australian astronomy that take active steps to advance the careers of women through focused programs and strive for sustained improvement in providing opportunities for women to achieve positions of seniority, influence and recognition.

In 2016 WiA broadened its aims to encompass wider issues of diversity. The overarching objective of the IDEA Chapter is to achieve an environment in all institutions associated with Australian astronomy that is welcoming and supportive of all academic staff, professional staff and students, regardless of gender and sexual identity, ethnic and cultural background, disability, age, family/carer responsibilities, political affiliation, and religious belief.

The Department received the Bronze award in this scheme in 2016.

Read our 2018 This Week story about the Department of Physics and Astronomy’s efforts to create a more inclusive culture >

Associate Professor Ronika Power has been named as the recipient of one of two Early Career Awards from the Union Académique Internationale – a global organisation of more than one hundred national and international academies from more than 60 countries across the world.

As part of the celebration of the Union’s Centenary in 2019, the Board created two awards of €6000 ($10,700 AUD) each for a period of two years (2020-2021) to scholars who qualify as Early Career Researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

“The project I will be undertaking under the auspices of this award is entitled: The Sentinels of Ħal Saflieni, Malta: Science Facts versus Science Fiction,” says Ronika.

“In close collaboration with Heritage Malta, the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage Malta and colleagues from various international institutions, the project will carry out the first-ever interdisciplinary analyses of the remains of the only surviving individuals (<20 out of a prospective 7,000 people) excavated from the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, a multi-level subterranean Neolithic (~4,000–2,500 BC) burial and ritual complex located in Paola, Malta.”

Congratulations to the LEAP UP Refugee Mentoring Program run by the Widening Participation Unit has been shortlisted for the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Awards under Equity and Opportunity.

The Awards are judged by an independent panel of eminent higher education veterans and this year will be held on 27 August at the Hilton Brisbane.

The team would be delighted if University staff and their friends and family contribute to this new knowledge we are building about domestic exposures to contaminants of concern in Australian homes. Participants simply have to fill in a two-minute survey on the website and then collect and send in your sample.

You can post it in, put it in internal mail, or drop it off in the DustSafe box which is in the post room at Level 4, 12 Wally’s Walk.

For more details visit the website.

So, when a piece of research comes along that fits in with expectations, connects missing evidence and supports current research, it is welcomed and applauded like a long-lost friend.

This is the enviable position that a Macquarie researcher has found herself in and she couldn’t be more excited. Dr Kira Westaway from the Department of Environmental Sciences recently discovered the missing evidence that connects the human dispersal timeline from Africa round to Australia and supports an early arrival of modern humans into Australia.

Her lead-authored research recently published in Nature provides evidence for a human presence in Southeast Asia between 73,000-63,000 years ago – almost 20,000 years earlier than previously thought.

“You know that your research has been accepted when everyone collectively sighs in relief,” said Kira.

“We can now say with some confidence that modern humans had reached the island of Sumatra before 65ka (kilo annum) – when evidence suggests they had already made the crossing to Australia. This evidence has been greatly anticipated but has been a long time coming.”

The site, Lida Ajer, was a ‘lost cave’ excavated over 120 years ago by the ‘Java Man’ discoverer and Dutch palaeoanthropologist, Eugen Dubois. His findings were not lost, now housed in the Lieden museum in the Netherlands, but the exact location of the cave had been lost to scientific and even local knowledge.

Armed with a copy of a 120-year-old map and plan of the cave, Kira searched endlessly to rediscover this lost archive of evidence that was crucial to the human dispersal story.

“I sometimes feel like my life is like an Indiana Jones movie – finding lost caves in tropical jungles using a weathered old map, recovering fossil treasure to bring back to the museums,” she said.

Why was Lida Ajer so worth finding?

Nestled in amongst the dense array of orangutan teeth, Dubois also found two human teeth that were thought to be of great antiquity. Kira and her colleagues rediscovered the site with the intention of establishing a firm chronology for the evidence and testing the modern human attribution of the teeth.

“The hardest part was trying to find the site again.

“We only had a sketch of the cave and a rough map from a copy of Dubois’s original field notebook. We stumbled across the cave almost by accident. But, the minute I saw a large calcite column in the entrance I knew we had found the cave dug by Dubois over 120 years earlier.”

The Lida Ajer human teeth were identified as modern human 70 years ago by Hooijer, a Dutch palaeontologist studying orangutan fossils, and while the study was convincing, it lacked comparative studies of contemporaneous human fossils.

The teeth were reanalysed using state-of-the-art imaging techniques, allowing insight into enamel thicknesses and junctions between the enamel and dentine, critical for distinguishing human from other primate teeth. The analyses confirmed that the teeth are anatomically modern human, indicating that they were present on the Sumatran landscape at that time.

A barrage of dating techniques were applied to the sediment around the fossils, to overlying and underlying rock deposits in the cave and to associated mammal teeth, indicating that the deposit and fossils were laid down between 73-63 thousand years ago.

“Along with the location of the cave the importance and significance of these teeth had been lost due to an inability to confidently identify and date them. We finished off what Dubois had started all that time ago – but we had modern dating techniques and state-of-the-art scanning techniques on our side.

“I see this research as a triumph of modern scientific techniques applied to a long-standing problem.”

Despite fitting in with the recent human dispersal evidence from Morocco and northern Australia and providing the missing 20,000 years in Southeast Asian evidence, the research was not without its surprises.

“No one could have expected that the oldest evidence of modern humans would be found to the west of the expected dispersal route, so far inland, and up in the mountains within a dense rainforest environment – that was a surprise!”

It is generally accepted that modern humans dispersed via coastal routes due to ease of movement and plentiful resources. Rainforests are considered difficult environments to live in ­– they require technological innovations and sophisticated hunting techniques. Finding a modern human presence in a rainforest location at 73-63 thousand years ago suggests that these skills were in place by this time. This research supports a short chronology of human dispersal across the globe – meaning that they dispersed much quicker than originally anticipated.

“The capability of early modern humans is constantly surprising us – finding their presence in Lida Ajer at this time means that they dispersed much quicker and over a wider area, were more resourceful, and had more skills than we have ever acknowledged. I have a new-found respect for these early members of our species.”

Demonstrating its global appeal, this research has reached all corners of the globe with Kira being interviewed by news channels in Australia, Spain, Brazil, China, Russia and UK.

“Everyone has been really supportive and the general feeling is that at last Southeast Asia evidence can take its rightful place on the timeline of modern human dispersal from Africa to Australia.”

Dr Kira Westaway, Dr Neil Harrison and Corrinne Sullivan (formerly Franklin) have all been honoured for their work and significant contribution to the quality of student learning in a specific area of responsibility over a sustained period.

The creation of effective earth science learning environments that support different learning styles and positively impact on the student experience has seen Dr Kira Westaway from the Department of Environmental Sciences receive one of the awards.

“This citation represents seven years of studying how students learn so I could develop an approach that engages them and delivers the type of student experience that I would have wanted if I were still at university,” she said.

“Students these days are looking for more than the delivery of information. They want to be inspired, challenged, motivated and provoked – and yet supported and understood. My approach ‘reigniting student curiosity’ recognises the pressures on students these days and helps them get excited about science and their degrees.

“The development and application of this approach has taken a great deal of time with new ideas tested every semester, so it’s great to get recognition for all the extra effort. However, the real winners will be the students when these ideas are given a platform to be disseminated across the university community.”

Dr Neil Harrison from the Department of Educational Studies received his award for leadership and innovation in curricula development that ensures the inclusion of local Indigenous community knowledge in urban locations in teacher education.

“It is a great honour to receive national recognition of my contributions to student learning in the field of Indigenous education,” he said.

“Bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous people together on Country is crucial to building a strong and harmonious future for Australia, and my contributions to student learning are directed to this end. The citation inspires me to establish yet more opportunities for Aboriginal experts and university students to work together and learn from each other.”

 And finally, Ms Corrinne Sullivan from the Department of Indigenous Studies was recognised for the development of a transformative and motivating learning space in Indigenous Studies that has inspired students to critically and sensitively reflect on their perspectives and world views.

“Teaching in a field where so many people regularly extend themselves above and beyond the parameters of their job descriptions, it is difficult to consider anything that one does as outstanding,” Corrinne said.

“For me to be included in a very talented and professional group of award winners is both the height of humility and the pinnacle of pride. I am deeply honoured to receive this award and am very thankful for those who have guided me over the years. This award is very affirming and inspires me to do more.”

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Kevin Jameson said “We’re very proud that three of our dedicated educators have received this important national recognition for their outstanding contributions to student learning.

Next week – 23 to 29 October – is International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. We caught up with environmental lead testing expert Professor Mark Taylor from the Department of Environmental Sciences who says that despite Australia being a high-income nation that has implemented many exposure control measures, some communities remain at risk.

What do Australia’s current health guidelines tell us about lead exposure?
Australia has set a blood lead level of 5 micrograms per deciliter (50 parts per billion – ppb) as the acceptable maximum level of exposure. International research has demonstrated adverse health effects at blood lead levels less than 10 ppb in both children and adults including cognitive damage, behavioral problems, fetal growth and increased blood pressure. In the three lead mining and smelting towns of Broken Hill, Mount Isa and Port Pirie, 50 per cent of young children have blood lead levels above 50 ppb placing them at risk of life-long adverse health problems. Recently, we calculated that around 100,000 Australian children would have blood lead levels above 50 ppb.

What can Australia do to eliminate lead contamination?
Some effective strategies have already been implemented: a now almost complete global ban of leaded petrol use is in place, and there is a United Nation’s Global Alliance to eliminate lead paint. We must also strive to hold mining organisations accountable when it comes to minimising environmental lead contamination and cleaning up contamination. Complete global elimination of the use of leaded petroleum for cars and airplanes (AVGAS), lead shot, wheel weights and fishing sinkers should also be a top priority for governments worldwide. Where there are viable alternatives, they should be used and where not, such as AVGAS, they should be developed.

How can we protect ourselves?
This is a difficult question to answer, because as far as we know there are no safe levels of lead and it is hard to identify exposure risks. Paul Harvey, a PhD student in my research group, recently published research showing that Australians are being unnecessarily exposed to lead via household plumbing products such as tap fittings. Installation of lead-free fittings and end of tap water filters can help to eliminate exposures. Houses built before approximately 1970 are likely to contain lead paint and require a professional decorator to remove it safely. Garden soil can contain high-levels of lead, particularly in the older parts of cities and in lead mining and smelting towns. To minimize exposure, remove or cover the soil and wash your hands before eating. For those who live, work or recreate (e.g. shooting ranges) in places where higher than normal amounts of lead are present, getting blood lead levels tested is an essential element of personal protection.

Learn more about Mark’s research in this field, or International Lead Poisoning Awareness Week.

In a few sentences can you explain a little about what your work involves?
My research is focused on understanding how and why rivers and wetlands are created and modified over time, and how biophysical processes cause change in fluvial landscapes.

Take us back to the beginning – where did it all begin?
I first started my research about 15 years ago as a student, and I have visited the Macquarie Marshes and other wetlands each year since. The marshes themselves are iconic – the beauty and expanse of the landscape are striking, as is the stark contrast between the wet and dry parts of the wetlands.

Why is this work important?
This work is critical for understanding, conserving, and managing rivers and wetlands in a long-term context. For example, the Macquarie Marshes are very dynamic – they are ever-changing – and several other rivers and wetlands in dry landscapes around the world are similar to them. My research seeks to explain how quickly biophysical changes are occurring in systems like the Macquarie Marshes and the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and what factors are controlling, or moderating, them.

You have recently returned from a field trip to Okavango Delta, Botswana. Tell us a little bit about your work there.
The field trip was mainly funded by a Macquarie University Research Development Grant and the project was titled “Sediment and carbon in ‘wetlands and drylands’: understanding long-term biophysical change in iconic ecosystems”.

A key factor that causes significant change in rivers and wetlands is avulsion, the process of channel relocation on the floodplain that can lead to a river abandoning its course (i.e. channel failure) in favour of a new one (i.e. channel formation). This type of channel change often modifies wetlands with rich habitats, biodiversity, and biomass.

This project seeks to better understand the key forces that influence channel failure and formation in the Panhandle region of the Okavango Delta. The style and frequency of avulsion have implications for the distribution of water, sediment and nutrients in the system, which influence aquatic productivity, vegetation growth and decay, and long-term carbon storage in these iconic wetlands.

So what’s next?
I have another research trip coming up in December, when I will travel to the Nile River, Egypt to work as part of a team with Dr Yann Tristant from Macquarie’s Department of Ancient History to investigate the links between environmental change and human use of the temple at Dendara.

Arguably the longest, most impressive and complex rock art sequence anywhere in the world can be found in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Dr Kira Westaway from the Department of Environmental Sciences worked alongside researchers from the University of New England and the University of Wollongong, as well as Aboriginal Traditional Owners based in Kandiwal and Kalumburu, on the collaborative Australian Research Council project which aimed to date the art of this region.

The story has made headlines around Australia, and Dr Westaway has also been interviewed by international editions of National Geographic. Here’s what the media are saying:

Interested in seeing how Macquarie University is being reported in the media? Sign up for the Daily Media Report by emailing communications@mq.edu.au.

Macquarie researchers are finalists in two categories in the 2016 Australian Museum Eureka Awards, announced last Friday.

The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes recognise excellence in research and innovation, leadership, science communication and school science across a broad spectrum – from environmental innovative technologies, to science journalism, mentoring and for the first time, citizen science.

Professor Ewa Goldys from the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the ARC Centre for Nanoscale Biophotonics is a finalist in the ANSTO Innovative Use of Technology category.

The hyperspectral imaging technology, developed by Professor Ewa Goldys and Dr Martin Gosnell, enables the colour of cells and tissues to be used as a non-invasive medical diagnostic tool. This powerful approach is easily accessible and yields translational outcomes for patients and industry.

Professor Goldys said: “With our pioneering hyperspectral imaging technique we are able to unveil the biomolecular composition of cells and their nanoscale contents.”

“This lets us distinguish between healthy and diseased cells in areas as diverse as embryology, neurodegeneration, cancer and diabetes. What is key is the great potential of this technology to impact positively on lives – supporting clinicians in making improved diagnosis and health decisions for patients.”

The Ngukurr Wi stadi bla Kantri Research Team with the Yugul Mangi Rangers are finalists in the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science Eureka Prize for Innovation in Citizen Science category.

Through cross-cultural citizen science research, the Ngukurr Wi stadi bla Kantri (‘We study the Country’) Research Team is equipping Aboriginal elders and youth with the knowledge and tools to better understand and manage South East Arnhem Land environments. Through the project, the team is re-discovering a large and remote area unknown to Western science and working towards maintaining endangered Aboriginal biocultural knowledge.

Project lead, Dr Emilie Ens from the Department of Environmental Sciences said: “This project aims to re-discover a biologically and culturally diverse part of remote South East Arnhem Land through on-ground collaborative research with Aboriginal elders and youth. We are very excited to have all our hard work acknowledged in this way and hope to inspire other researchers to embark on more collaborative science with Indigenous Australians.”

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Sakkie Pretorius said being nominated in the Eureka Awards is an opportunity to highlight the diverse and important work our researchers do.

“That we have two very different projects as finalists demonstrates the excellence of the research undertaken by our highly committed and talented researchers across a broad spectrum of research activity.”

The winners of the prizes will be announced in the presence of more than 600 science, government, industry and media leaders at the Eureka Prizes Award Dinner at Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday 31 August.