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: Melinda Hodkiewicz   
Achievement:  Professor Melinda Hodkiewicz, from UWA's School of Engineering, has become the first Australian Fellow of the Prognostics Health Management Society. Professor Hodkiewicz is a key international technical and collaborative leader in digital transformation to improve maintenance, asset management and safety practices in industry. Professor Hodkiewicz received the award at the PHM Society’s Asia Pacific conference in December 2025. The Prognostics and Health Management Society is dedicated to promoting the development, growth and recognition of prognostics and health management as an engineering discipline and advancing the theory and practice.  It has over 7000 members from more than 100 countries.  In thanking the society for the recognition Professor Hodkiewicz thanked her UWA Computer Science colleagues Associate Professors Wei Liu and Tim French for their close collaboration through the UWA NLP-TLP group in enabling the work to improve semantic interoperability of asset data.

Name: Dawn Bessarab
Achievement:  Professor Dawn Bessarab has retired from UWA leaving an enduring legacy that continues to inspire. Professor Bessarab, a proud Bard/Yindijibarndi woman, became Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Medical and Dental Health at UWA in 2013. With a background in social work, she built a career spanning teaching, research and community service. Professor Bessarab’s work with yarning was seminal in shaping how qualitative Aboriginal health research is approached. Clinical Yarning was later developed from her earlier work and expertise, and together with staff from the WA Centre for Rural Health she helped refine it into an Indigenous conversation framework now widely applied across Australian and international communities. She was a tremendous friend and mentor to staff, collaborating closely on research, Aboriginal community engagement and efforts to translate knowledge into meaningful change.

Name:  Ellen Xiao
Achievement:  Ellen Xiao, who graduated from UWA with a Master’s in Professional Engineering (Software), has been recognised with the Results Matter Woodside Graduate Award. The graduate data scientist “demonstrated strong technical ability, initiative and ownership across a diverse set of projects, many of which would typically be led by more experienced team member”. While she was a student at UWA, Ellen took part in the Co-operative Education for Enterprise Development program. Her project tackled the increased presence of magnificent frigatebirds on manned and unmanned offshore platforms, which poses a safety risk for the birds and helicopter operations. By utilising CCTV footage from the platforms, Ellen applied machine learning techniques to detect and count the birds. Her goal was to develop a system that could identify patterns in bird behaviour and build a detection model that would assist in creating safer mitigation strategies, such as bird relocation or dissuasion mechanisms.

Name: CoraMetix
Achievement: CoraMetix has been selected as Regional Finalist (Oceania) for the Global Startup Awards. CoraMetix is a spin-off company of research being undertaken at Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research with the support of UWA. The medical device company is developing next-generation polymeric heart valves using advanced 3D printing technologies. The Global Startup Awards celebrate the people and organisations building the next generation of innovation across the world. Current aortic valve replacements are derived from animal tissue and can have a limited life span of less than five years, whereas CoraMetix’s 3D-printed valve is designed to remain functional for the rest of a patient’s life. The awards help discover and empower high-growth and innovative entrepreneurs and their startups through global competitions, events, collaboration and community.

Congratulations UWA staff, alumni and students.