Murdoch University researcher Dr Akilew Adane has been awarded a $397,224 WA Near Miss Award for 2024-2025 for his important work aiming to improve the lives of Aboriginal children.  

Dr Nicola Gray from Murdoch University’s Health Futures Institute has been awarded $100,000 to investigate environmental risk factors in cardiometabolic disease. 

The Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund’s WA Near Miss Awards (WANMA) Emerging Leaders program is designed to support WA researchers who narrowly missed out on securing a highly competitive National Health Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator Grant funding. 

The funding has previously backed some of the State's brightest minds to make groundbreaking discoveries and is set to spur the new group of 25 researchers to success. 

Dr Adane is an epidemiologist and data scientist with more than ten years of research and teaching experience, specialising in the maternal and child health field, and a lecturer in Murdoch University’s Ngangk Yira Institute for Change.  

He will use the grant to build an evidence database so health professionals can optimise health, development and education outcomes for Aboriginal children. 

Dr Adane says this recognition and support will benefit children throughout our State and will help to advance his research. 

“This fellowship will support my ongoing work to improve Aboriginal maternal and child health and related outcomes through impactful research, guided by a deepened understanding of Aboriginal health and equity goals and priorities identified by Aboriginal Elders, researchers, and community leaders,” Dr Adane said. 

Dr Gray’s research is centred on understanding the complex interactions between our genetics, environment and lifestyle in health and disease through the application of metabolic phenotyping to reveal chemical changes in several disease areas. 

She says she is excited to receive this funding which will allow her to interrogate the exposome to understand environmental risk factors in cardiometabolic disease. 

“I am very grateful to receive a FHRI Near-Miss Award from the Emerging Leaders program,” Dr Gray said. 

“This grant will enable me to generate valuable preliminary data to strengthen my future grant applications, and is such a valuable scheme to support early-mid career researchers in WA in becoming more competitive for national funding.” 

A total of $4.8 million has been awarded to the 25 Western Australian researchers to boost their chances of success to future funding. The funding is provided through an 18-month grant and/or a 3-year fellowship. 

The full list of recipients is available online.