Awards and achievements

The University of Western Australia has a continual roll call of awards, scholarships and prizes presented to staff and students.

To recognise these achievements, an article is published on the UWA news page on the website and in UWA Forward on the first week of every month. If you know of great awards or achievements across the University please email [email protected]

Name: Shawn Raphael Tan 

Achievement: Shawn Raphael Tan has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce for his contributions to social change, particularly in the fields of psychological science and mental health.

Mr Tan, from UWA’s School of Population and Global Health, is an early-stage researcher investigating the mental health needs of international students in Australian universities. 

The PhD scholar is working collaboratively across disciplines of psychology, public health, education, and medicine to modify specific risk and protective factors of mental health. He believes in empowering others and is a university tutor/demonstrator in public health and psychology at UWA.

The RSA is a prestigious London-based organisation that works collaboratively to empower people, places and the planet to flourish in harmony by focussing on proven change processes.

Image: Early-stage researcher Shawn Tan.

Name: Paige Maroni

Achievement: Dr Paige Maroni, from UWA's School of Biological Sciences, has been awarded a Thomas Davies Research Grant for Marine, Soil and Plant Biology. 

Dr Maroni received the grant for her project, The deep sea and a deep phylogeny: reconstructing the backbone of deep-sea Amphipoda using phylogenomics.

“Little is known about deep-sea organisms — from the diversity and demography of species, their life-history traits, or the levels of connectivity within or between deep-sea features across groups,” Dr Maroni said. 

“Species only found in—and isolated by—the deepest trenches of the ocean offer an ideal opportunity to investigate evolution and speciation on unprecedented scales.” 

The grant of up to $20,000 is awarded annually and funded through a philanthropic bequest from the estate of the late Thomas Lewis Davies to the Australian Academy of Science.

Name: Simon Lang

Achievement: Professor Simon Lang, from the School of Earth Sciences, has been awarded the 2024 Barry Goldstein Medal for Innovation, Collaboration and Communication in Geoscience. 

Professor Lang was recognised for his innovation, collaboration and communication. 

The selection panel noted Professor Lang is highly respected across the world by fellow academics, consultants and industry personnel and had demonstrated a high level of collaboration during his time at universities across Australia and during his tenure at Woodside in Perth and Chevron in Perth and Houston.

Professor Lang’s innovative work on seismic stratigraphy, reservoir characterisation and modern depositional analogues has been integrated into petroleum exploration and development studies around Australia. His work on the modern Neales Delta at Lake Eyre has become a world class field trip training course for both geoscientists and reservoir engineers. 

The award is presented by the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (PESA), a non-profit association of individuals involved in the energy geosciences industry.

Congratulations to all UWA staff, students and alumni.