Eureka Prizes for 2005 Announced. (August 10, 2005)

Over $230,000 was presented to the winners of 24 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes yesterday.

Frank Howarth, Director of the Australian Museum describes says, "The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes are Australia's most comprehensive national science awards,"Now in their 16th year, the Eureka Prizes raise the profile of science in the community by acknowledging and rewarding outstanding achievements in research, leadership and innovation, education and science communication."

A full listing of the awards and descriptions of the work are available at http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/. In all there are 11 prizes awarded for scientific research, three for innovation and leadership, five in the area of science education, and five for science communication.

Focusing on just a few of the awards, in the research section notable winners are:

Alicia Jenkin developed a way to use small sections of human artery to research blood vessel growth, instead of using rats while

Anthony Hannan has shown that in mice, brain disorders, even inherited ones like Huntington's disease, can be affected by environmental factors.

NSW chemical engineer Veena Sahajwalla has shown the steel industry that they can use waste plastic bottles to make steel and

Sydney astrophysicist Dr Peter Tuthill has produced the best ever infra-red images of life and death among the stars.

Brisbane's Antonio Reverter has developed algorithm which make sense of massive amounts of genetics research data.

The outstanding effort in "Innovation and Leadership" was by

Brisbane's Ian Frazer who has created two types of vaccine to fight cervical cancer, potentially saving millions of lives.