The Victoria Fellowships recognise young researchers with leadership potential and aim to help them enhance their future careers, while developing new ideas which could offer commercial benefit to Victoria.

Twelve Victorian scientists received the $18,000 Fellowships this week at the State Library of Victoria from the Minister for Innovation, Services and Small Business, Louise Asher.

The University of Melbourne’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor James McCluskey said the awards recognised the University of Melbourne’s world class young researchers who offered promising solutions to complex global problems.

“These awards recognise hard work, dedication and leadership by these talented researchers early in their careers. We congratulate them and wish them well in their endeavours,” he said.

The University of Melbourne recipients are:

Dr Colin Scholes a former Fulbright Fellow, is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and is researching ways of capturing and storing carbon to reduce carbon emissions.

Dr Mohsen Kalantari, a spatial data engineer, is developing solutions to a growing problem of poor quality or wrong crowd sourced data being incorporated into online maps.

Dr Kalantari is Associate Director, at the Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration, Department of Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne, is one of a handful of scientists and engineers worldwide with experience in the use and validation of metadata (data about data).

Gastroenterologist and researcher, Dr Peter De Cruz is investigating how to better care for people with complex intestinal failure. In Australia there is currently little established expertise in the area, and no nationally recognised programs to provide intestinal transplants.

Dr De Cruz is a gastroenterologist at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and is completing his PhD at the University of Melbourne.

Microbiologist Nicholas Tobias is exploring the use of an unusual enzyme he has helped to discover to see whether it can be used to develop antibiotics, immunosuppressants and anti-cancer treatments.

Currently completing his PhD at Monash University, Mr Tobias works as a research microbiologist at the University of Melbourne.

For more information on the Victoria Fellowships visit: http://bit.ly/R3s9F1.