HMR Patron, Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair, awarded the inaugural Young Medical Researcher of the Year award to Dr Darren Shaffren – now Professor.
During this dinner, Dr Shaffren was seated next to Mr John Arnold, CEO of the Greater Building Society. This dinner marked the start of a successful funding relationship between Dr Shaffren and the Greater, which led to the commercialisation of Viralytics.
Our inaugural Ball was held on March 10 the following year at Maitland Gaol. At the event, Dr Vicki Clifton was named Young Medical Researcher of the year and the HMRI Award for Research Excellence was introduced. This new award was given to Professor Rob Sanson-Fisher.
The name of the Young Medical Researcher award was subsequently changed to the HMRI Award for Early Career Research and two new awards, the Directors Award for Mid-Career Research and the HMRI Foundation Research Team Excellence Award were introduced in 2014 and 2021 respectively.
Today, each of the individual recipients receives a research grant of $20,000 and the research team receives $30,000.
Bob and Paula Cameron are long-term HMRI philanthropists and sponsors of both the excellence and early career awards.
While he describes the excellence award recipient as a “proxy for all the researchers and teams at HMRI and everything that they achieve”, Bob says the Early Career award is equally as important.
“The Early Career Researcher, for what is inevitably a fairly young person, we think is a really important award,” Bob Cameron says.
“All early career researchers need recognition, they need support, and what they can end up achieving can be quite extraordinary.
Dr Rachel Sutherland was named 2023 Early Career Researcher for her SWAP IT program, which has been adopted by 550 schools across NSW.
Bob says Dr Sutherland exemplifies the potential of all early career researchers at HMRI.
“Dr Sutherland’s work has already extended well beyond the Hunter Valley,” he says.
“We offer our sincere congratulations for what has been achieved and what I know will be achieved in the future.”
HMRI Asthma and Breathing Program researcher, Professor Vanessa McDonald, has received both the Early (2013) and Mid-Career (2021) awards.
She says the “recognition you get from your peers and colleagues means a lot”.
“The fact that it was local recognition was really important for me,” Professor McDonald says.
“As researchers, we are often recognised from an international or national perspective but that doesn’t always follow at home. We just get on with the job and get it done.”
The “other side of the coin”, Professor McDonalds says, is that it has allowed her to develop fellow researchers.
“These awards are not just for any individual, but actually for a team of researchers,” she says.
“They provided me with additional funding so I could build up my early and mid-career researchers with opportunities that they wouldn’t have had without that.”
