Awards and fellowships

In a huge vote of confidence in the flagship, our efforts across the full spectrum – support, research and business – were recognised at CSIRO’s recent awards ceremony:

• Wendy Reid won the inaugural CSIRO Medal for Support Excellence for her passionate delivery of innovative tools and processes for flagship and organisational budgets and planning.
• The CSIRO-PETRONAS Engagement Team received the CSIRO Medal for Business Excellence for working across CSIRO's research and business capabilities to build a Strategic Alliance with Malaysian oil and gas giant PETRONAS.
• The Northern Prawn Fishery Bio-economic Team won a CSIRO Medal for Research Excellence for developing a model that enabled Australia's most valuable Commonwealth fishery to be among the first major fisheries in the world to fully embrace both economic efficiency and environmental sustainability in an operational management system.

Find out more about the CSIRO Medal winners.

The achievements of CSIRO staff contributing to the flagship were also acknowledged in the following awards:

• Dr Sophie Bestley was selected as one of 16 finalists in Fresh Science 2009 [external link] for her application: Cold tuna tummies in hot water. She also received a Tasmanian Marine Science Fellowship [external link] from the Tasmanian Government, the University of Tasmania and the Embassy of France in Australia.
• Jan Zika won the Southern Cross Young Achiever Hydro Tasmania Environment Award [external link] for his innovative work in ocean circulation, particularly heat and carbon dioxide transport.
• CSIRO Office of the Chief Executive postdoctoral fellowships were awarded to Dr John Volkman and Dr Stan Robert's team for the microbial-rare biosphere project, and to Dr Sean Pascoe for a project linking human behaviour to ecosystem models.
• Dr Mat Vanderklift received a 2009 CSIRO Julius Career Award for his work on marine food webs, connectivity, and assessment and prediction of impacts of change in marine ecosystems. Mat will use the award to further strengthen CSIRO's impact in these areas nationally and internationally.
• Dr Peter Last won the Australian Society for Fish Biology's most prestigious honour, the K Radway Allen Award [external link], for his contribution to Australian shark and ray knowledge, with particular reference to the new edition of Sharks and Rays of Australia he co-authored with John Stevens.
• Dr Trevor McDougall received the Anton Bruun Commemorative Medal from the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission [external link].
• Dr Peter Nichols was presented with the 2009 Australian Marine Science Association (AMSA) Silver Jubilee Award [external link] – a special honour only bestowed when a nominee is considered by the AMSA judging panel to have made an outstanding contribution to marine science in Australia.
• Dr Will White was a finalist in two categories of the Eureka Prizes [external link]: the ABRS Eureka Prize for Early Career Species Discovery and the People's Choice Award.
• Dr Alistair Hobday received funding through the Australian Government's International Science Linkages program [external link] to undertake a joint project with collaborators at Nagasaki University exploring the influence of the Leeuwin Current on the movement of Southern Bluefin Tuna in Western Australia's coastal waters.
• Kyla Drushka (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) received the inaugural Fulbright-CSIRO Scholarship [external link], established to enable one high-quality US postgraduate student to spend up to a year working with one of the 10 National Research Flagships.