Congrats Jamie and the international team on awarded funding for an 8-year research programme from global charitable foundation Wellcome Trust.

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A team led by Professor Graham Ogg, Deputy Director of the MRC Translational Immune Discovery Unit (TIDU) and Leader of the Translational Dermatology Unit, alongside Professor Jamie Rossjohn (Monash, Australia and TIDU Affiliate member), Professor Branch Moody (Harvard, USA), Professor Muzlifah Haniffa (Newcastle) and Professor Gurdyal Besra (Birmingham), have received a Wellcome Discovery Award to investigate how immune cells contribute to inflammation.

The research programme will be strongly collaborative, bringing together researchers with complementary skills from the co-applicant laboratories to address how T cells can specifically sense certain lipids which can be indicators of infection or tissue damage.

Immune cells help protect us from infections and other challenges, but can also contribute to different forms of inflammation if not adequately controlled.  T cells are a key type of immune cell that circulates in the bloodstream and can enter different organs to sense infection and damage.  By understanding how T cells are triggered, the research team aims to gain deeper knowledge about different forms of inflammatory diseases and how they might develop new approaches to treatment.

The Wellcome Discovery Award will also promote training and development opportunities and will facilitate interactions with patients, the public and scientific communities.  The discoveries will be made available in open databases, to enable the wider field and drive improvements in human health.

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Monash Sensory Science ‘Highly Commended’ Award – Victorian Premier’s Design Awards

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2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards Winners Announced

More innovative and creative designers from across Victoria have been celebrated for their achievements, with the Victorian Premier’s Design Award of the Year shining a light on the people who take Victoria’s design industry from strength to strength.

Minister for Creative Industries Colin Brooks today congratulated all the winners and finalists of the Victorian Premier’s Design Awards, which showcase the best of Victorian innovation and design from the past 12 months – backed by the Allan Labor Government.

This year’s award was won by UNESCO World Heritage listed Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, with the tourism infrastructure project featuring a Visitor Information Centre, café and boardwalks that pays homage to the area’s history as one of the world’s most extensive and oldest aquaculture systems.

A weathered steel mesh pedestrian bridge with a black timber shelter spans a fast flowing Killara creek at Tyrendarra IPA.

Budj Bim Cultural Landscape –  2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Award of the Year

The design reflects the rich history of the Gunditjamara Traditional Owners who have worked and fished on the land for more than 30,000 years while the projects supports them to care for Country and share their stories with the growing number of visitors to the site which gained World Heritage status in 2019.

The project was commissioned by the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Corporation and was designed by Hamilton architectural firm Cooper Scaife Architects.

Founded in 1996, the Government’s annual awards celebrate design across eight categories – architectural, communication, digital, product, fashion, service, student and design strategy, with this year’s winners chosen from more than 330 entries.

Other winners include the CYBERTONGUE Food Testing System, a tool that analyses food samples in minutes, and a The Social Studio, Kay Abude and Alpha60 collaboration which uses off-cuts to create zero-waste bags and hats.

Swinburne University product design graduate Lily Geyle took home the Student Design category award for a post-operation recovery device for transgender people, while the Service Design winner was One Stop One Story, an online information hub where users tell their story before being connected to multiple corporate and community services.

The Design Strategy award went to the Fashion Futuring Toolkit which helps fashion designers and students learn ways to combat climate change, while design agency AKQA won the Digital Design award for its Nike campaign which used AI and machine learning to create a live virtual tennis match between two versions of Serena Williams.

Design is an economic powerhouse of Victoria’s $38.4 billion creative industries sector, employing almost 200 000 people and injecting $6 billion annually into the state economy.

View All Winners and Finalists

View Monash Sensory Science entry

 

 

 

 

Monash Sensory Science is a world-first, multisensory design strategy engaging one of Australia’s leading biomedicine institutes through multisensory design, co-creation, STEM exhibition and outreach for blind, low vision and diverse-needs communities. Leveraging the lived experience of a legally blind artist/designer, the program has empowered scientists to communicate cutting edge biomedical discovery through creative multisensory exhibitions for diverse needs audiences. Together with Swinburne University designers, Monash Sensory Science enables diverse engagement, through visual and tactile design, novel technologies, interactions and experiences, audio design and sonification and through multisensory science books. The initiative has achieved national and international recognition

Original article

Congrats Erica and the Monash Sensory Science team – Finalists in 2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards

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Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s inclusive science literacy initiative Monash Sensory Science has been named as a design strategy finalist in the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards. Established by the Victorian Government in 1996, the awards highlight and celebrate local design capability across architectural, communication, design strategy, digital, fashion, product, service and student categories.

Monash Sensory Science is a world-first, multisensory design strategy engaging one of Australia’s leading biomedicine institutes through multisensory design, co-creation, STEM exhibition and outreach for blind, low vision and diverse-needs communities. Established by the Rossjohn Laboratory and leveraging the lived experience of legally blind artist and designer Dr Erica Tandori, the program has empowered scientists to communicate cutting-edge biomedical discovery through creative multisensory exhibitions for diverse needs audiences. Together with Swinburne University designers, Monash Sensory Science enables diverse engagement through visual and tactile design, novel technologies, interactions and experiences, audio design and sonification, and multisensory science books. The initiative has achieved national and international recognition.

First held in 2018, the Monash Sensory Science Exhibition is one of their key design strategies. Designed for all ages and levels of science literacy, the exhibition explores science concepts such as immunity and immunology through multi-sensory, multi-modal artworks and tactile displays, offering an accessible and inclusive learning opportunity.

Dr Tandori said it was truly an honour and testament to the team’s collective dedication to be named as a finalist. “Our exhibition initiative, spearheaded by ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Jamie Rossjohn and developed collaboratively between Monash and Swinburne University, strives to break barriers in STEM and biomedical science communication, particularly for underrepresented audiences like those with blindness, low vision, and diverse needs,” she said. “Monash Sensory Science is a pioneering multisensory design strategy that has engaged scientists and individuals living with blindness and low vision to ensure inclusivity. With over 450,000 Australians experiencing blindness and low vision, our mission to make biomedicine accessible to all takes on a crucial role.”

“We hope that our approach becomes a global model, and my heartfelt thanks go to the incredible Rossjohn team and Swinburne designers for their hard work and dedication,” she said. “This recognition reinforces the importance of bridging gaps in understanding and making strides toward a more inclusive future in biomedical science communication.”

Read about the team’s entry: Design Strategy 2023 Finalists here.

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Sophia reflects on her Rossjohn Laboratory Graduate Disability Internship experience

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Making science accessible to people with diverse needs is an important mission of the Rossjohn Laboratory in the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute. The lab offers student scholarships and graduate internships to people with disabilities in order to broaden the diversity of people engaged in scientific discovery and to offer an inclusive opportunity to gain career experience in biomedical research.

Sophia Ladanyi recently completed her time in the lab’s Graduate Disability Internship Program and wrote some reflections about her experience.

Here’s what she had to say:

“I was offered an Internship as an Administrative Assistant in the Rossjohn Laboratory, working under the guidance and supervision of Project Manager Jennifer Huynh and artist-in-residence Dr Erica Tandori. From the beginning Jennifer and Erica made me feel welcome by helping me set up my computer and making me feel relaxed. I also felt comfortable and part of the lab team by getting to meet the Founder, Professor Jamie Rossjohn.

Rossjohn Laboratory interns Sean Christopher, Sophia Ladanyi, Rhiannon Thorneloe, Peter Knice.

Rossjohn Laboratory interns Sean Christopher, Sophia Ladanyi, Rhiannon Thorneloe, Peter Knice.

Erica and Jennifer had such a pleasant and endearing manner I felt at ease working with them. As for myself as someone with a disability, I was accommodated for by working set hours, 9am to 2.30pm on regular days, and having breaks from using my computer as needed.

My role as an assistant to the Artist in Residence was to take part in preparing for the recent Monash Sensory Science Exhibition – Autoimmunity. I learnt how science can meet art, especially for people with blindness and low vision. I made numerous artworks that represented human cells, such as white blood cells neutrophils and macrophages. It was great to see these artworks made into Sensory Science Books ready for the exhibition.

On the day of the exhibition, I showed guests to the main Auditorium area. One of the guests had a guide dog and a carer with her and showing them to the Auditorium made me feel like I was contributing to the exhibition in an important way.

I was honoured to have been filmed for the video of the exhibition. I was asked a series of questions where I talked about my experience as an intern and what I had learned from the exhibition. I highlighted how the artwork in the exhibition conveyed science in a new and exciting way.

I found it most inspiring, as someone with a disability, that one of the exhibition guests who was blind and also a current student at Monash University, has subsequently been offered an internship at the Rossjohn Lab.”

See Sophia in the Monash Sensory Science Exhibition video:

Congrats Jamie on your Visiting Professor appointment at the University of Oxford

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Welcome to the new RDM Visiting Professors

RDM warmly welcomes two new Visiting Professors this term:

  • Jamie Rossjohn joins the department as Visiting Professor of Structural Immunology, and
  • Martin Young joins as Visiting Professor of Cardiac Science.

Professor Rossjohn travelled over the border from Wales to undertake his undergraduate degree and PhD at Bath University. After pursuing his PhD where he was exposed to the world of X-ray crystallography, he was awarded a Royal Society Fellowship (1995) to work at St. Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research (SVIMR), Melbourne, Australia where he explored detoxifying enzymes and studied bacterial toxins like aerolysin and perfringolysin O (PFO); his work on PFO revealed the molecular mechanism of these toxins. In 2002, Prof Rossjohn moved to Monash University, establishing the Protein Crystallography Unit, which has grown to include over 100 researchers. He played a key role in designing and establishing a fully-automated crystallisation facility.

As a laboratory head and current NHMRC Investigator Fellow, Prof Rossjohn’s research is centred on understanding immunity. He has used structural biology to explain pre-T-cell receptor (TCR) self-association in T-cell development, and how the TCR specifically recognises polymorphic human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecules in the context of viral immunity and aberrant T-cell reactivity. He has unearthed structural mechanisms of HLA polymorphism impacting on drug and food hypersensitivities, as well as Natural Killer cell receptor recognition. He has pioneered the molecular understanding of lipid-based immunity by T cells, revealing that it can differ fundamentally from peptide-mediated adaptive immunity.

Recently, he has provided a structural basis of how vitamin B metabolites can be presented and recognised by the immune system, revealing a new class of antigen. Collectively, he has published > 500 papers and mentored numerous researchers towards obtaining higher degrees and nationally competitive fellowships.

His multidisciplinary approach, supported by a broad network of collaborators has led to a fundamental advancement of knowledge in this field and his research leadership has been recognised by numerous national and international awards. In 2022, Prof Rossjohn was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and Associate Member of EMBO.

Professor Young received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and DPhil in Biochemistry at Oxford (Oriel College and Green College). Following postdoctoral training at Boston University and the University of Texas-Houston, he held faculty appointments at the University of Texas-Houston and Baylor College of Medicine, before joining the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2009 where he is currently a Professor of Medicine and the Jeanne V. Marks Endowed Chair of Cardiovascular Disease.

Research in Prof Young’s laboratory is focused on understanding how environmental factors, such as time-of-day and nutrition, influence cardiometabolic and cardiovascular health. Regarding time-of-day, the laboratory has been actively exploring how an intrinsic time-keeping mechanism, known as the circadian clock, influences cardiac function. His pioneering studies have resulted in a new field, which intersects chronobiology with cardiovascular research.

In addition to his research success, Prof Young has remained firmly committed to training future generations of both physicians and scientists. This has been achieved, in part, through directing both medical school courses, as well as postdoctoral training programmes. As a Visiting Professor of Cardiac Science at RDM, Prof Young will lend his unique expertise in cardiovascular disease and circadian biology to augment both ongoing and nascent research programmes, as well as facilitate the training of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

 

Original article