Recipients of 2024 PhD Scholarship Top-up Awards

SPHERE Cancer Clinical theme has announced the successful recipients of its 2024 PhD Scholarship Top-up Awards. The Scholarship Top-up Awards are designed to enhance the translational cancer research capabilities of PhD students who possess research interests aligned to the four key focus areas of research of the SPHERE Cancer Clinical Theme:

• Bringing omics into clinical practice
• Living better with and after cancer
• Poor outcomes cancers
• Reducing unwanted clinical practice variation

This year, we received a high volume of quality applications covering a wide range of areas of cancer research.

We have awarded five top-up awards.

The recipients and their research are listed below:

Chelsea Valentin – UNSW Sydney
Supervisor: Dr Christina Signorelli
The role of occupational therapy in paediatric oncology

Eliza Macdonald – UNSW Sydney
Supervisor: Dr Briana Clifford
Improving health outcomes after Endometrial Cancer: ACUMEN Clinical Trial

Johana Luhur – Garvan Institute of Medical Research
Supervisor: Associate Professor Marina Pajic 
From functional genomics to precision medicine: therapeutic potential of targeting epigenetic deregulation in pancreatic cancer.

Ngoc Ha Tran – UTS
Supervisor: Dr. Nham Tran
The detection of human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) in the saliva of Head and Neck cancer patients.

Steven He – Children’s Cancer Institute
Supervisor: Associate Professor Antoine deWeck    
Screening strategies for novel target identification in paediatric cancer