The Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research recognizes outstanding individual achievement by a young Australian Researcher. This year, the Award goes to Associate Professor Anton Peleg, an Infectious Diseases Physician and NHMRC Biomedical Fellow in the Department of Microbiology at Monash University, who has identified the urgent need for the discovery and development of novel antimicrobials.

Antimicrobial resistance is recognized by the World Health Organisation as one of the three greatest threats to human health and novel strategies including those that target bacterial virulence, persistence and adaptation are desperately required.

Associate Professor Peleg’s vision for the next four years is to apply innovative methodologies to identify mechanisms by which the most critical hospital-acquired pathogens cause disease and identify targets which may be the basis of future drug development.

He will use his unique position as an Infectious Diseases physician (The Alfred Hospital) and a laboratory group leader (Department of Microbiology, Monash University) to study the most clinically relevant, high impact infectious disease problems; he will also collaborate with industry to provide the foundations for translation into better diagnostics and therapeutics.

This Prestigious Award and medal was presented to Associate Professor Peleg at the ASMR Medical Research Week® Gala Dinner in Melbourne (Hilton on the Park, Grand Ballroom) this evening.

Thursday 20 - Saturday 22 February 2014
Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre
Melbourne, Victoria

Plenary Speakers

Associate Professor Susan Huang
Infectious Disease School of Medicine Medical Director, Epidemiology and Infection Prevention
University of California, USA

Dr Maiken Arendrup
Mycology Unit
Statens Serum Intitute, Denmark

Dr Jason Roberts
NHMRC Career Development Fellow
University of Queensland, Australia

Antimicrobials 2013
21 - 23 February 2013
Sofitel Sydney Wenworth Hotel, Sydney
www.antimicrobials2013.com

The Australian Society for Antimicrobials is pleased to announce the inaugural “Howard Florey Oration”.

The Howard Florey oration will be delivered each year during the Society's annual scientific meeting and will be presented by a Scientist who has made a significant contribution to a greater understanding of antimicrobials and their appropriate use.

The Australian Society for Antimicrobials would like to thank The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne, for allowing the Society to use the Howard Florey name for what we believe will become one of the prestigious scientific presentations on the Australian scientific meeting calendar.

The 2013 Howard Florey Oration will be delivered by Professor Matthew Cooper from the University of Queensland on Saturday 23 February.

Professor Cooper’s presentation is titled “New Antimicrobial Discovery: Promise versus Reality”. Professor Matthew Cooper completed his PhD in Australia in 1995 and then spent 13 years in the UK, first at the University of Cambridge, then in start-ups and biotechnology companies. This involved innovation, fund raising, intellectual property generation, licensing, product development and commercialisation. He returned to Australia in 2009 as a NHMRC Australia Fellow. He has consulted with Private Equity Investment, Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology and Diagnostics companies, was Managing Director of Cambridge Medical Innovations (part of Alere Inc.) and CSO of Akubio Ltd. He is an inventor and driver of a several antibiotic drug discovery programmes with lead compounds pre-clinical. He is an expert in label-free technologies and their application to drug discovery and development with two books in this field.

The Australian Society for Antimicrobials wishes to acknowledge the following companies for becoming Foundation (Sustaining) Members of the Society

Pfizer Australia
AstraZeneca

Novartis

Merck Sharp and Dohme

Becton Dickinson
bioMerieux Australia
Cepheid



Foundation Members websites can be located in the Foundation (Sustaining) Members section of the ASA webpage