Dr. Laura Grogan is WDAA's 2019 recipient of the Barry L. Munday Recognition Award!
At the Conference Dinner of the Wildlife Disease Association Australasia's 2019 conference in Tasmania (Little Swanport, 29th Sept - 4th Oct), Dr. Laura Grogan was awarded the Barry L. Munday Recognition Award 2019!
The Barry L. Munday Recognition Award is the Australasian Section’s highest award. It aims to recognise the significant contributions to wildlife health made by a member of the Australasian Section in the preceding 5 years (including research, study of disease, communication, education, training and mentoring). The Award consists of a shield made from timber and with details of the Award and Awardee engraved on a plaque.
From the WDAA website (https://www.wildlifedisease.org/wda/sections/australasian/
grantsandawards/barrymundayaward):
"Recipient of the 2019 Barry L. Munday Recognition Award
Dr Laura Grogan from Griffith University was the recipient of the 2019 Barry L. Munday Award. WDAA are particularly excited to recognise an early-ish career researcher who has made outstanding contributions to wildlife health research in Australia and a fantastic representative of what WDAA represents.
Laura completed a Bachelor of Veterinary Science and Bachelor of Science (Veterinary) degrees at The University of Sydney. Her BSc(Vet) research involved studying the ecology and health of brushtail possums in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. She then undertook a PhD degree at James Cook University (Townsville), in collaboration with Taronga Zoo Conservation Society and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research Berghofer. Her PhD focused on the immunology and epidemiology of chytridiomycosis in Australian frogs.
Laura works at the interface of disease ecology, epidemiology, pathogenesis and immunology of infectious diseases of wildlife. Her research seeks to unpack our understanding of the relative importance of processes occurring at these scales for outcomes on both the individual host and host populations.
Laura has continued to work on amphibian chytrid fungus post-PhD and currently holds a position as Lecturer and Research Fellow at Griffith University. She is part of a team which was recently awarded an ARC Discovery Project entitled "A novel modelling approach for understanding wildlife disease dynamics". This project aims to develop a novel framework for field wildlife disease systems, applied to chytrid fungal infection of an endangered frog species (the Fleay’s barred frog) as a case study. The project expects to develop models able to be applied to many disease systems, improve understanding of host resistance and tolerance to infection, and improve capacity for mitigation of emerging infectious diseases. This work has international impact and provides significant national benefits in ensuring the conservation of Australia’s biodiversity.
A huge congratulations to Laura for this very well-deserved award."
