The University of Otago is committed to recognising and supporting the work of early-career staff. In 2015, five Early Career Awards for Distinction in Research were presented, as well as the annual Carl Smith Medal and Rowheath Trust Award.
Early Career Awards were received by Dr Anitra Carr, Dr Jörg Hennig, Dr Karl Iremonger, Dr Sheri Johnson and Dr Logan Walker.
Dr Anitra Carr
Dr Anitra Carr is a senior research fellow and centre co-ordinator for the Centre for Free Radical Research, University of Otago, Christchurch. After completing her PhD, she undertook an American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship at the Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University, USA. She is currently researching the role of vitamin C in acute and chronic disease, such as cancer, and recently obtained a Freemasons Carrell-Espiner Research Fellowship to begin research into the role of vitamin C in severe infection and sepsis.
Dr Jörg Hennig
Dr Jörg Hennig became a lecturer at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics after completing a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Jena, Germany, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam. His research focuses on cosmological models, properties of black holes and the application of highly-accurate numerical methods to problems in general relativity. He aims for a deeper understanding of unusual cosmologies and has a Marsden Fast-Start Grant for his “Causality and Cosmological Models” project.
Dr Karl Iremonger
An Otago undergraduate, Dr Karl Iremonger completed a MSc and PhD in neuroscience at the University of Calgary, Canada, later returning to Otago to undertake postdoctoral research. In 2014 he became a lecturer in the Department of Physiology and was awarded the Prime Minister's MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize as well as a Sir Charles Hercus Health Research Fellowship. He is a principal investigator in the Centre for Neuroendocrinology and the Brain Health Research Centre, while running a research programme focused on understanding how brain cells control the body's response to stress.
Dr Sheri Johnson
Dr Sheri Johnson is a lecturer in the Department of Zoology. After studying in Canada and the USA, she took up a position at the University of Otago in 2010, and established a strong line of independent research, notably on the effects of age on fertility traits in zebrafish and humans. With interests in ecology, evolution and behaviour, she has developed collaborations within the University, the wider New Zealand science community and overseas. She has obtained grants from the Marsden Fast-Start fund and the National Geographic Society.
Dr Logan Walker
Dr Logan Walker is a senior research fellow in the Department of Pathology at the University of Otago, Christchurch. His research evaluates the clinical significance of genetic variants associated with cancer risk and development. He has been awarded the Sir Charles Hercus Fellowship and leads projects within international consortia to advance diagnostic tools for screening those at high-risk of cancer. His published research has contributed to the clinical categorisation of BRCA1 and BRCA2 sequence variants for breast/ovarian cancer families worldwide, leading to an improvement in the clinical management of patients and their families.
Associate Professor Jessica Palmer (Faculty of Law) and Associate Professor Suetonia Palmer (Department of Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch) are the co-recipients of the Carl Smith Medal and Rowheath Trust Award.
Associate Professor Jessica Palmer
A graduate of Auckland and Cambridge Universities, Associate Professor Jessica Palmer worked as a High Court Judge's clerk and in a national law firm before coming to Otago. Her recent research has focused on trust law and she was a member of the New Zealand Law Commission's reference panel for its review of the law of trusts. Her work is cited by courts and has been influential on the development of the law in relation to sham trusts and the control of express trusts. She is the author of two leading textbooks, and is a contributing editor to the New Zealand Law Review on equity and restitution.
Associate Professor Suetonia Palmer
Associate Professor Suetonia Palmer undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School before returning to Otago in 2011. A kidney specialist, she applies complex meta-analysis techniques to medical treatments to test drug effectiveness, and has shown that many widely-prescribed treatments have little evidence to support their use. Her findings have been published internationally including in the Lancet, JAMA, PLoS Medicine and the Annals of Internal Medicine, and have informed international policy and clinical guidelines. In 2012 she received a L'Oréal Australia and New Zealand for Women in Science Fellowship and is currently a Rutherford Discovery Fellow.