A night of celebrating health and medical research excellence

Coinciding with the 2-day meeting of NHMRC Council and the Australian Medical Research Advisory Board in Canberra, the ceremony was attended by Chair, Professor Caroline Homer AO, and committee members, as well as other distinguished guests. They were joined by some of Australia’s leading health and medical researchers and receiving NHMRC’s Research Excellence Awards and NHMRC’s 2025 Biennial Awards.

Over the course of the special event, guests heard speeches from Professor Homer, and NHMRC’s Chief Executive Officer, Professor Steve Wesselingh. Guests were also provided with a glimpse into the groundbreaking science happening in our national institutions through presentations from awardees Professor Helen Marshall AM (The University of Adelaide) and Associate Professor Garron Dodd (University of Melbourne).

Courageous and exceptional scientific innovation, whether in the lab, hospital, or out in the community, has been recognised among this year’s awardees. NHMRC’s Research Excellence Awards are awarded annually to top-ranked researchers and teams following peer review of applications to our highly competitive grant schemes.

Each Research Excellence Award honours a leader in Australian health and medical research, whilst acknowledging the importance of their work in improving the health outcomes in Australia and around the world.

Honouring Australian Nobel Laureates Professor Barry Marshall AC and the late Professor Robin Warren AC who passed away in 2024 at the age of 87, the Marshall and Warren Awards recognise the highest ranked application and the most innovative and potentially transformative application in the Ideas Grant scheme.

Associate Professor Louise Cheng of the University of Melbourne and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Research Centre received the 2024 NHMRC Marshall and Warren Ideas Grant Award for her research aiming to answer how tumours grow at the expense of other tissues in cancer cachexia.

University of Melbourne researcher, Associate Professor Garron Dodd received the 2024 NHMRC Marshall and Warren Innovation Award for his innovative research aiming to turbocharge treatments for type 2 diabetes. 

This year we had the pleasure of presenting NHMRC’s 2025 Biennial Awards which recognise a group or an individual who has made a special contribution in an area of importance to NHMRC – Consumer Involvement, Ethics and Integrity, Outstanding Contribution, Research Quality, Science to Art and – new for 2025 –Peer Review Excellence.

The inaugural NHMRC Peer Review Excellence Awards – one to an early-career peer reviewer and another to a senior peer reviewer – were awarded to Associate Professor Nadeem Kakooush from the University of New South Wales and Professor Philip Batterham from the Australian National University, respectively. Associate Professor Kakooush and Professor Batterham embody NHMRC’s principles of peer review, demonstrating their fairness and transparency when applying best practice in independent peer review.

All recipients of the 2025 Biennial Awards boast a wealth of knowledge, passion and commitment to NHMRC and the greater community. As long-standing leaders demonstrating expertise and commitment to consumer involvement, ethics and integrity and other aspects of quality research these awards simply scratch the surface of the recognition they deserve.

The Guunu-maana (Heal) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program at the George Institute for Global Health received the NHMRC Research Quality Award, recognising the program’s significant contribution to supporting the quality of Australian health and medical research.

Guunu-maana is committed to research quality, being led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing to generate evidence that privileges Indigenous knowledge. This award recognises the meaningful, ethical and strengths-based research and advocacy that is led by Guunu-maana, and that is driving transformation of the health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples and communities.

The full lists of NHMRC Research Excellence Awards and Biennial Awards recipients are available in the table below as well as on NHMRC’s website.

Quotes attributable to NHMRC CEO, Professor Steve Wesselingh:

• “It is with great pleasure I congratulate the exceptional individuals who contribute to Australian health and medical research with NHMRC’s Research Excellence and Biennial Awards this evening.
• “This event celebrates extraordinary leadership and research excellence, perfectly underscoring NHMRC’s mission towards building a healthy Australia, which is an ethos shared by each individual, group and organisation receiving an award.
• “This recognition affirms the immense amount of talent reflected within our national health and medical research sector, and those who are not afraid to champion their bold ideas and push boundaries.”

2025 Science to Art winner

Image and caption by Associate Professor Arutha Kulasinghe, Frazer Institute at the University of Queensland.

This is a digital image of skin cancer located in the head and neck region. The skin cells are shown in bright red, with the tumour pockets in dull red surrounded by yellow. Immune cells (including macrophages and lymphocytes) are patrolling the tissue in green and magenta.

The image was captured using spatial proteomics, which was the 2024 Nature Method of the Year, and allows the visualisation of up to 100 biomarkers at the single cellular level across the entire tissue section. Referred to as the ‘Google Maps’ approach to tissue profiling, this revolutionary approach can be used to map every cell across different tumour types and tissues to unravel why some tumours respond to treatment while others do not.

Better understanding of the tumour microenvironment for each individual patient would allow for treatment and therapy personalisation to improve the care and outcomes for individuals affected by cancer.