Western to the World

5 March 2020

NICM Health Research Institute Higher Degree Research students Muhammad Ali and Dhevaksha Naidoo have been awarded a Western to the World scholarship. The initiative from Western Sydney University is an international knowledge exchange program that helps grow Western’s international collaborations, reach and research impact in supporting HDR students for a research period of up to three months at an international university.

PhD candidate, Mr Ali will travel to and work with The Metabolomics Innovation Center (TMIC) at University of Alberta, Canada later in June for his PhD project. His research focuses on implementing artificial intelligence algorithms to predict synergistic anticancer drug combinations in breast cancer, and will be under the supervision of informatics and metabolomics pioneer, Professor David Wishart. Future collaboration opportunities will be established at the end of the exchange program when Maz’s supervisor, Professor Chun Guang Li, will visit.

Fellow recipient and PhD candidate, Ms Naidoo, will travel to University of California San Francisco, United States, towards the end of 2020 for her PhD project investigating the impact of retreats on wellbeing. She will be working with leading researchers, including Professor Elissa Epel at the Blackburn Lab, where research samples will be analysed for changes in telomere length (small protective caps at the ends of DNA molecules that make up our chromosomes) and activity, which are indicators of longevity. Dhe will be joined by her supervisor, Dr Carolyn Ee at the conclusion of her exchange period.