2022 HDA CRF PhD Excellence Awards, 11th Cohort Scholars Announced

2022 HDA CRF PhD Excellence Awards, 11th Cohort Scholars Announced

The Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation joins Healthy Development Adelaide in announcing Demi Georgiou and Joshua Robinson as the 2022 and 11th Cohort recipients of the Annual CRF PhD Excellence Awards.

In a statement released today, Healthy Development Adelaide (HDA) thanked CRF for its ongoing financial support of the PhD Excellence Award and its partnership of 15 years helping HDA to foster research excellence and career development in South Australia.

The two successful applicants, our 11th cohort, will each receive $5,000 per annum for 3 years to augment their scholarships.

Demi Georgiou is a PhD candidate within Medical Biochemistry, College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University.

Demi’s research project ‘Elucidating the biological importance of Pregnancy Zone Protein (PZP)’ will provide much needed insight regarding the functions of PZP, a major pregnancy-associated protein, and increase our understanding of the role of damaged proteins in Preeclampsia a leading cause of pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality. “I am incredibly honoured and grateful to receive a 2022 HDA and Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation PhD Excellence Award, thank you so much! This award will support me in my research and the knowledge gained from my project has the potential to be used as the foundation for developing novel therapeutic strategies for preeclampsia”, said Demi.

Joshua Robinson is a PhD candidate within the Adelaide Medical School, Robinson Research Institute at the University of Adelaide.

Joshua’s research project ‘Assessing and treating the impacts of maternal asthma on newborn lung function’ aims at exploring the impact of asthma during pregnancy on babies, specifically looking at lung disease. “If we can improve lung health outcomes at this early stage, we can reduce the risk of other lung diseases later in life e.g. childhood asthma”, said Joshua Robinson.