The Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation joins Healthy Development Adelaide in congratulating Jessica Judd and Carl Campugan as the 2021 and 10th Cohort recipients of the Annual CRF PhD Excellence Awards.

In a statement released today, Healthy Development Adelaide thanked CRF for its ongoing partnership in the PhD Excellence Award that now spans 14 years with helping to build research excellence and career development in children’s health and development in South Australia.

Funded by the Foundation since 2008, the PhD Excellence program provides PhD top-up scholarships for South Australian-based scholars who are undertaking projects in the area of healthy development. The successful applicants will each receive $5,000 per annum for 3 years to augment their scholarships.

It’s also an inspiring platform for the Foundation to continue its 45-year-dedication to fostering early career researchers where grant funding is rarely available.

Here’s where Jessica and Carl will focus their PhD’s:

Jessica Judd is a PhD candidate within the BetterStart Child Health and Development Research Group in the School of Public Health at the University of Adelaide.  

Jessica’s research project ‘Mental health and related service and support use among children experiencing different adversities’ focuses on mental health related service and support use among children experiencing different adversities, homelessness and contact with the child protection system.  

Ultimately, Jessica hopes to inform policy decision makers and improve access to mental health services and supports for children and adolescents experiencing adversities. Her project uses the Better Evidence Better Outcomes Linked Data (BEBOLD) platform to examine groups of children in South Australia who have a higher prevalence of poor mental health. 

Carl Campugan is a PhD candidate within the Robinson Research Institute, University of Adelaide and Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham.

Carl’s research project ‘Utilizing light and sound in Assisted Reproductive Technologies’ aims to focus on investigating how light and sound trapping techniques can be used in current Assisted Reproductive Technologies.

Ultimately, Carl hopes that with this research, a better understanding of optimal in vitro culture conditions can be achieved, conditions that can hopefully assist families in achieving successful pregnancies when using Assisted Reproductive Technologies.