ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year Award

2023 ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year

The 2023 ACT Emerging Scientist of the Year is Dr Aparna Lal.

Dr Aparna Lal, an Associate Professor at the Australian National University, strengthens the integration of environmental science and climate data to enhance population health, policy and practice.

Dr Lal led the ACT’s sewage surveillance program for COVID-19, one of the first to be set up nationally, and devised a novel hotel quarantine study for the ACT Government.

Dr Lal is an international expert on how a focus on population health can supplement and improve outcomes of environmental restoration. She envisions a healthy planet that sustains humanity, through improved preparedness to global environmental threats.

2022 – Dr Benjamin Schwessinger, whose work on the intersect of pathogen genomics and biosecurity aims to better understand the biology of plant pathogens posing biosecurity risks to Australian agriculture and the environment.

2020 and 2021 - Award not offered

2019 – Dr Sophie Lewis, whose work studying Australia's record hot 2013 summer led her to develop new techniques that are helping scientists around the world understand the local, national and global impacts of climate change.

2018 – Dr Rose Ahlefeldt, whose work to build better quantum memories will be needed in the future for quantum computers and, eventually, the quantum internet.

2017 – Dr Kai Xun Chan, whose research looks at the effect of drought conditions on plants, and the ability of some plants to sense drought stress.

2016 – Dr Ceridwen Fraser, whose research looks at how plants and animals respond to past climate change, which has important implications for how we manage biodiversity and ecosystems now and into the future.

2015 – Dr Colin Jackson, whose work combines the disciplines of biology, physics and chemistry and is working to find solutions to real-world problems.