Congratulations to Professor Ary Hoffmann (image right) and Professor Paul Mulvaney who were among 15 of Australia's best researchers awarded the prestigious ARC Laureate Fellowships worth around $3.1 million each. 

Announced by Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research the fellowships are designed to support team-based research tackling urgent and complex issues. Each Fellow will lead a team of postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers in a project delivering significant benefits to Australia and the wider world.

Professor Hoffmann is an international authority on environmental stress monitoring, controlling pests and predicting how species will respond to climate change. His group's project, based at the Bio21 Institute, will focus on maintaining environmental health under the combined stresses of climate change and human population pressures. "The Fellowship will help us to develop guidelines for sustainable agricultural production as well as biodiversity protection in threatened environments like the Australian Alps and freshwater ecosystems."

Professor Mulvaney from the School of Chemistry and Bio21 Institute, and co-director of the University's Centre for Nanoscience and Technology, is world-renowned for his work in nanotechnology.  Professor Mulvaney and his group will explore the practical limits for plasmonics: the manipulation of light using metal nanostructures. In particular, the expected outcomes include the optical detection of single electrons, the detection and monitoring of chemical reactions one molecule at a time, and demonstration of light-driven logic gates.  Professor Mulvaney is also Associate Director Nanobiotechnology research theme at the Bio21 Institute.

Read more - Research Fellowships to Benefit Society http://newsroom.melbourne.edu/news/n-316