2010 Annual Report - Institute for Molecular Bioscience - University ...

5 executive reports
DEPUTY DIRECTORS’ REPORT
RESEARCH
The end of 2009 marked the close of
IMB’s first decade of existence and
meant it was time for our second
quinquennial review. This document
contained some very pleasing statistics
that demonstrated how we have grown
and strengthened as an organisation.
For example, in the five years from 2005
to 2009, our competitive grant income
from national and international sources
grew to over $160m, which represented
an increase of 87 percent from the
first five years. Two thirds of our group
leaders now support their own salaries
with senior research fellowships, an
increase of 50 percent in the number
of fellowships since 2005. We have
published over 1050 papers in the
last five years, a 60 percent increase
in output. Many of these papers were
accepted in top-rank international
journals such as Science, Nature and
Cell, and in leading disciplinary journals.
These publications were cited, on
average, more than 3000 times per year,
an increase of 74 percent from 2000-
2004. Our success rates in NHMRC and
ARC funding schemes are consistently
higher than national and Queensland
averages; particularly notable is our 90
percent success rate for ARC Linkage
grants.
We aim to continue improving in the
future. Our achievements from the first
year of our second decade, outlined
below, show that we are on track to
achieve this aim.
Professor Sean Grimmond was part of a
worldwide collaboration that published a
paper in Nature in April. The International
Cancer Genome Consortium is working
to map the genomes of 50 different
types and subtypes of cancer. Professor
Grimmond leads Australia’s research
effort, which involves sequencing 500
pancreatic and ovarian tumours in
collaboration with Professor Andrew
Biankin from the Garvan Institute and
Professor David Bowtell from the Peter
MacCallum Cancer Centre.
As Professor Wainwright noted in his
report, our grant results for 2010 were
not as spectacular as 2009 but we still
performed well. The IMB received nearly
$10 million for projects and equipment
from the NHMRC and the ARC, and
six IMB researchers were offered a
total of seven fellowships from the two
funding bodies. More details of these
grants and fellowships can be found
in the Highlights section beginning on
page 10, however I would like to make
particular mention of Dr Matt Sweet,
who had the opportunity to take up
both an ARC Future Fellowship and an
NHMRC Research Fellowship. Dr Sweet
was appointed as a group leader at
IMB in 2007, and his excellent results in
these fellowship rounds are a testament
to his leadership and the quality of his
research.
Professor John Mattick’s Australia
Fellowship (see Professor Wainwright’s
report, preceding page, or Highlights
section on page 10, for more details)
means the IMB is now home to four
recipients of this highly regarded award
for medical research, and we are the
only research institute in Australia to
have received an Australia Fellowship
every year since the program’s inception.
While we rightly recognise our winners
of national fellowships, the IMB is also
committed to providing opportunities
to support the work of outstanding
early-career researchers to facilitate their
move towards independent researcher
status. With this in mind, the institute’s
executive committee decided in 2010
to create the IMB Fellowship scheme.
Exceptional researchers from among
our postdoctoral scientists would be
selected to receive financial support
for their projects, with up to four ‘IMB
Fellows’ resident at the Institute at any
one time.
Dr Joshua Mylne from the Craik group
was chosen as the inaugural IMB Fellow.
Dr Mylne was originally a botanist who
studied vernalisation – the process
by which plants sense cold and alter
their flowering time. Within the Craik
group, which has a strong focus on
developing improved protein frameworks
for drugs, Dr Mylne has been examining
the potential of a mechanism within
sunflower seeds to manufacture peptide
drugs cheaply and quickly. This project
would allow the efficient production
of drugs, particularly in third-world
We aim to continue improving in
the future. Our achievements from the
first year of our second decade,
outlined here, show that we are on
track to achieve this aim
’’
– Professor Jenny Stow
Deputy Director (Research)