An ecologist and conservation biologist, genetic disease researcher and mathematician specialising in partial equations are among 26 researchers from around the country to be elected Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science.
The University of Western Australia’s Professor Graeme Cumming FAA, Professor Aleksandra Filipovska FAA FAHMS and Professor Enrico Valdinoci FAA are all internationally recognised as leaders in their fields.
Professor Anna Nowak, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research), congratulated the recipients on their Fellowships, which recognise their significant contributions to shaping a brighter future.
“These researchers represent a diverse range of scientific fields, and their research is helping to solve some of the most pressing issues affecting society today,” Professor Nowak said.
“Their dedication has put them at the forefront of their disciplines globally and the innovative outcomes of their research is having a positive impact for communities and will continue to do so into the future.”
Professor Cumming, from the Oceans Institute and School of Earth and Oceans, has been instrumental in developing novel conceptual frameworks, systems models, statistical tools and analyses to support sustainable ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation.
He has developed new approaches to understanding social-ecological scale mismatches, system identity, growth trajectories in resource-dependent societies and causes of social and ecological collapse.
His work has improved understanding of the critical roles of scale, location and the spatial dynamics of land and seascape change for the resilience and sustainability of linked systems of people and nature.
Professor Filipovska, from the Medical School and The Kids Research Institute Australia, is recognised for establishing and popularising the field of mitochondrial gene expression and pioneering work in synthetic biology.
She is an advocate for the mitochondrial disease community and has developed new technologies that have redefined the mitochondrial transcriptome and its regulation, accelerating diagnosis of patients with genetically inherited diseases.
Professor Filipovska has invented and licensed multiple genome-editing technologies for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
Professor Valdinoci, from the School of Physics, Mathematics and Computing, is a leading researcher in the field of partial differential equations and has made groundbreaking contributions to classical elliptic and parabolic partial differential equations and to nonlocal partial differential equations.
He a founder of the field of nonlocal partial differential equations and has played a central role in developing both theory and applications for these equations.
Professor Valdinoci has led the field in understanding the behaviour of these equations, particularly in instances where both nonlocality and nonlinearity are present – such as nonlocal minimal surfaces and phase coexistence models with long-range particle interactions.
Fellows are nominated and elected by peers in their fields for their significant contribution to shaping a discipline or a breakthrough discovery.
Image top: Professor Enrico Valdinoci, Professor Aleksandra Filipovska and Professor Graeme Cumming.