More awards and grants in 2014!

As part of our service to the postgraduate students of UWA, we provide funding for a number of awards to assist in your study and research. The number and value of the awards changes each year depending on our financial situation. For this year, we are pleased to announce that we have been able to increase the number of awards this year, and increase their value!

We will be offering the following awards and grants for 2014 below:

• 15 travel awards at $900 each (increased from 9 travel awards at $850 each in 2013)
• 6 fieldwork awards at $900 each (increased from 3 fieldwork awards at $850 each in 2013)
• 9 small grants at $350 each (increased from 3 small grants at $300 each in 2013)

For the first round of awards and grants, applications are now OPEN!
Applications will close Monday 26th May.

Further, we have amended the application requirements. In previous years, applications for the above awards required an academic transcript so that the PSA could verify your enrolment. However, the President felt that the full academic transcript was an excessive requirement, and potentially unfair to students who had studied at the university for previous degrees. We now just require a confirmation of enrolment which can be obtained from Student Admin showing that you are currently enrolled in a postgraduate course. 

More great news this year involves the introduction of two new awards, small awards (for short courses like first aid training or statistics courses) and large awards (for interstate and possibly international courses like masterclasses, workshops, summer and winter schools). We are still in the process of finalising the details for these awards, and applications for them will not take place during the usual application rounds for the travel, fieldwork and small grant awards.

To top it all off, we are also offering not one but two leadership awards this year, and they will each be worth $250 (up from $200 last year). Applications for these awards will still require an academic transcript. We are accepting applications for the leadership awards throughout the year.

For more details in regards to the application process and the due dates for each round for the awards and grants above, please see the link below:

http://www.psa.guild.uwa.edu.au/grants/psa_funding

Good luck with your application!

PSA Conference Travel Award Report

Sports Medicine Australia: Asics Conference for Science and Medicine in Sport

Phuket, Thailand, October 22-25^th 2013

Sports Medicine Australia has a tradition of selecting a ‘boutique’ conference venue every two years. With the Hilton Arcadia in Phuket selected as this year’s venue, everyone attending could not have asked for a more beautiful location with white sandy beaches accompanied by crystal clear waters. This year’s conference was attended by 480 international attendees, which translated into over 150 oral and 50 poster presentations. As per expected, the amount of high quality research was evident. Clearly this piled up the pressure on myself to deliver a presentation of the same calibre. Fortunately, my presentation session was on the first day and when my time came, all things went as planned, leading to a productive discussion in the subsequent Q&A.

Although a huge sigh of relief was lifted after my presentation, I soon realised that this was when all the ‘actual’ work started. I found myself running between sessions in order to listen to specific presentations that were relevant to my field. Personally, the best part of the conference was listening to the opinions of other researchers, thus allowing myself to learn more about the different experimental designs that others have adopted to explore similar variables. Most importantly, I was fortunate enough to engage in discussions with researchers from Universities in Japan and the East Coast of Australia. Current signs appear promising, and I hope to be collaborating with them in a future study.

Another highlight of the trip was the series of workshops that were made available to attendees. I registered for one titled: ‘Publishing your work’. This workshop was an excellent resource and will come in extremely handy in the subsequent months, as I am about to complete my thesis. Clearly, the opportunity to sit down with the Editor in Chief and three Associate Editors of a highly ranked Sports Science Journal does not come by often. The Editors provided tips on what they call: ‘getting past the first hurdle’. They highlighted the importance of a sound abstract, a well-constructed hypothesis and a conclusion that accurately reflects the results, and most importantly answers the hypothesis.

In summary, the opportunity to attend this conference will play a huge role in my development. It has provided me with networking opportunities and information that will come in very handy in the near future. I strongly advise anyone who is considering attending an international conference to do it. Sometimes as a PhD student, we are ‘stuck in a bubble’ and there is so much more that can be gained by meeting fellow researchers.

Marc Sim

PSA Conference Travel Award Report

PSA Conference Travel Report

Randika Anjalie Jayasinghe (20828908)

School of Environmental Systems Engineering

The PSA conference travel award was used to attend the ninth annual Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace Conference, held at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, from the 14^th to 16^th August 2013.

Attending this conference provided a professionally rewarding experience. It gave me an opportunity to network with researchers from other universities who are working in diverse research areas within the engineering and social justice space. My paper titled “The assumptions, diverse realities and promises: Understanding the power relations in waste management in Sri Lanka” received valuable feedback and comments from the participants. In addition, I got the opportunity to listen to other presentations and to converse with researchers. Most importantly, presenters can also publish their conference papers in the Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace.

My research is focused on developing poverty reducing solutions for marginalised people working in waste management in Sri Lanka. Hence, this conference was a good learning experience and improved my understanding of how I can use social justice dialogues in the Sri Lankan context. I was able to develop networks with many of the international experts and scholars in the social justice field. There was opportunity to contribute to discussions and brainstorm ideas on new topics such as social justice, ethics, diversity, and sustainability, which added great value to my research experience.

The conference included presentations by international experts in the field, workshops, panel discussions, and a theatre performance providing an opportunity to engage in actual activities with other participants and sharing their input. The discussions enabled to share the social justice related research carried out at UWA and to learn new socially just community development concepts used in other parts of the world. The knowledge obtained through the conference and group-led discussions around concepts of engineering and development will add to conversations with UWA engineering students.

I thank the PSA for awarding this travel grant to cover part of my travel expenses to attend this important conference. I will acknowledge this contribution in my journal publication.

PSA Travel Award Report- Nathalie Collins

AMS-WMC 2013: Melbourne

The Australian Marketing Science Academy World Marketing Congress was held in Melbourne in 2013. With the support of the PSA I was able to attend and give two papers which I had authored and had been accepted. One paper was on authenticity in marketing; the other was on consumer religiosity (when people treat a the consumption of a product like a religion). 

The conference was held in the centre of Melbourne in a hotel that was so expensive ($240/night conference rate) I could never have afforded it. So I stayed in St Kilda, a tram ride away for about $100/night on average. However this meant that I needed to wake up extra early, because (that's right folks) BOTH my papers were on first thing in the morning!

I was able to re-encounter academics from around Australia who I had seen at other conferences. I noted their names so that I could run them past my supervisor as potential examiners. One lady from South Australia had been to three of my talks over the last 4 years! I was impressed. I was also able to intro duce myself to other early career researchers and some very established names in the field.

The outcomes (besides gaining a kilo or two from all the mini-cupcakes they served for morning and afternoon tea):

- I am in discussions with an American academic who is editing a series of short, business oriented marketing books about authoring one on authenticity;

- My head of department was there and attended one of my talks (and seemed to like it) so I was able to engage him in my research;

- A session on industry engagement with academia was very interesting, and demonstrated methods and roadblocks to companies and universities working together from a variety of perspectives. Although this was not immediately useful to me, I did earmark the information for future use.

Thank you PSA for helping me out. It made a BIG difference.

Regards,

Nathalie Collins

PSA Travel Award Report

PSA  Travel Award Report

Marina Borges Osorio, PhD student – School of Plant Biology

With combined funding from the PSA Conference Travel Award and the GRS Travel Award, I attended the BIONUT Summer School held in Gargnano (Italy) last June. The event is part of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network, an initiative involving nine renowned European research centres, such as Rothamsted Research and the John Innes Centre in the UK, and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Germany.

During the Summer School I learned about different aspects of plant mineral nutrition in a challenging and stimulating atmosphere. The scientific program was spread over three full days and included lectures from twenty first-class experts on plant nutrition, followed by short presentations from sixteen selected students with free-flowing discussion periods after each talk. I was among a group of eight guest students who had been selected to speak. The other eight student speakers were from the BIONUT network. In total, about seventy postgraduate students took part of the school.

In my talk I explored the connections between plant nutrition and pathogen defence in plants. This topic is a central aspect of my PhD research that focuses on how phosphite protects plants against Phytophthora, the pathogen that causes dieback and is devastating native ecosystems across southern Australia, including the internationally recognized biodiversity hotspot in southwestern Australia. My talk was a great opportunity to showcase the research carried out at UWA and discuss with the European community an issue that not only affects Australia, but which is also relevant worldwide.

Most of the participants were hosted at Palazzo Feltrinelli, a beautiful venue for the summer school and also the place we gathered for meals. The meals were in fact an added attraction, firstly for giving us a taste of the best Italian cuisine and secondly for being a great opportunity to network with experts and students in a very casual and friendly environment.

Overall, the knowledge gained, the connections made and the venue visited made this event a memorable experience that greatly contributed to my professional and personal growth. 

Students ready for the last dinner of the Summer School

View from Palazzo Feltrinelli, Gargnano

PSA Conference Travel Award Report

PSA Conference Travel Award Report

Last March 2013, I was awarded a PSA Conference Travel Award to attend the ‘National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Mitochondrial Biology Symposium 2013’, in Washington DC, USA and present my work on RNA Processing in Human Mitochondria. As a PhD student in the last year of this graduate journey, this was a fantastic opportunity and I am grateful to the PSA for contributing towards my travel expenses. Attending the conference opened my eyes to a world of research in my field that I could have never encountered in local or national conferences, as the mitochondrial research field is still in its early stages in Australia. I was able to chat with some of the world experts in my area of research and I even felt confident enough to question some of the results presented. The presentations I attended were of great quality and also provided me with some ideas for experiments for my own project. Finally, I had the opportunity to visit Washington DC, which I found surprisingly clean, multicultural and interesting, with a multitude of museums and art galleries. Tulips were blossoming all around the city, welcoming spring and although I had a vague sense of being constantly watched, as security is obviously tight all around the city, I would recommend a trip to anyone.

Thanks PSA for making my trip possible!

- Maria Lopez Sanchez 

Trish Dowsett- Travel Award Report

Trish Dowsett is post-graduate student in English and Cultural Studies. Her PhD thesis examines the relationship between the teaching of English at the tertiary and secondary levels in Western Australia since 1912. She presented a paper at the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society (ANZHES) conference held at RMIT Melbourne in November 2012 and is grateful to a PSA travel award for making the trip possible.

My first presentation of a conference paper will be remembered for two main reasons: how scared I felt prior to presenting it (but I survived!) and the amount of support and encouragement I came to receive from the members of my audience.

The conference was entitled ‘Buildings, Books and Blackboards: intersecting narratives’ and it was a theme fitting perfectly with my research. It was the combined conference of the ANZHES, Mechanics’ Institutes World Wide and the 10th Australian Library History Forum, and was part of Melbourne Knowledge Week 2012.

I have been a member of ANZHES for only a short period of time and hadn’t attended one of their conferences before nor met any other members. When the programme was finalised I was happy to read the names and topics of the other presenters. The sessions looked interesting and varied and I was delighted that one of the presenters was Bill Green, Professor of Education at Charles Sturt University and co-editor of Teaching the English Subjects: Essays on English Curriculum History and Australian Schooling, a book that I have relied upon religiously throughout my research thus far. It meant that not only could I listen to him and learn from him but I could meet up with him to discuss my thesis project which I wanted to do at some stage anyway.

The conference also allowed me to share some of my research. It was a 20 minute presentation on Walter Murdoch. As the titles of most conference papers include an obligatory colon I conformed and devised, ‘Professor of all things in general: Walter Murdoch and his contribution to Education and Literature in Western Australia.’ There was an on-going joke at the conference about which paper had the longest title and surprisingly I wasn’t even in the top ten!

The ten minutes of questions that followed my presentation were valuable to my work because I was asked a few questions that I couldn’t answer in much detail so I need to learn more about Murdoch’s Scottish writing persona, for example, and about regionality in Murdoch’s work. I didn’t feel that the audience members were out to ‘get me’ or ‘trap me’ which meant that I’m much more likely to present again at a conference, particularly an ANZHES one.

One of my favourite parts of the conference was the informal chatting. Because I felt so nervous leading up to my presentation I felt relieved that my presentation was scheduled for the first day so it meant that I could relax somewhat on the days that followed. During this time, many people asked me more questions about Murdoch, Literature and Western Australia. Murdoch’s influence at UWA in the first half of last century also meant that people were interested in how and what he taught, in his newspaper columns and in his place as a Public Intellectual. And some were just interested in his connection to Rupert.

So presenting my first conference paper made me realise that I need to present more often so my confidence improves and I feel less anxious leading up to them. I was pleased that I’d been ruthless in sticking to the paper’s word limit and I had practised a lot as this meant I wasn’t worried about timing which was a pressure that many other presenters experienced. I felt reassured by the people I met and the support from my supervisor and colleagues reminded me that while presenting is a part of academic life it is not necessarily one that people find easy. In this way it is a challenging but affirming process.

PSA Conference Travel Report 2012

PSA Conference Travel Report 2012

First of all, I am most grateful to the Postgraduate Students' Association (PSA) for the 2012 PSA Conference Travel Award. It has allowed me to register and attend the 2012 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence at Macau, China from 04 to 07 Dec 2012. My research on the Twitter social network forms part of my Master's thesis on "The Identification of Like-minded Communities on Online Social Networks". The paper that I presented is titled "Tweets Beget Propinquity: Detecting Highly Interactive Communities on Twitter using Tweeting Links", and it describes one of the proposed methodologies in my Master's thesis where we attempt to detect communities on Twitter that communicate frequently about a common interest (product/service). This research would be important for companies trying to utilize social media as new outlets for their targeted advertising and viral marketing efforts. Furthermore, the opportunity to present my paper at the conference has allowed me to obtain valuable feedback to further improve my work.

In addition to obtaining valuable feedback, I also had the opportunity to discuss my current work and some future research ideas with many leading experts in my field. As a result of the many fruitful discussions and feedback, I am in the final stages of my thesis writing and would be submitting my thesis in Jan 2013 (finishing approximately 9 months ahead of schedule). This conference has also offered me a great opportunity to network with academics from other institutes. In particular, I have been offered an appointment as a research enginner at the Living Analytics Research Centre, Singapore Management University and will be commencing in Jan 2013. Once again, I thank PSA for the travel award which has greatly facilitated my Master's research and enhanced my future research career.

Kwan Hui Lim

Master of Science (By Research) Candidate

School of Computer Science and Software Engineering

PSA Conference Travel Award Report

PSA Conference Travel Award Report

My PSA travel award helped to cover my expenses to attend the annual Fertility Society of Australia (FSA) conference in Auckland, New Zealand. The travel award allowed me to present a major component of my PhD research to a national and international audience of experts within my field for the first time. In addition to presenting my electronic poster, attending the conference in person allowed me to meet and discuss my research with other scientists and fertility professionals. In particular, I had an opportunity to discuss my research with a prominent sperm biologist whose work a large proportion of my PhD is based on. Through this meeting, I received several invaluable insights into my PhD, including giving me new perspectives on how to interpret my results. This personalised feedback was extremely useful and will greatly improve the quality of my thesis and publications arising from it. This meeting also increased my confidence in my own PhD thesis, as my work was validated by experts in my field. Meeting other scientists and academics also provided opportunities for possible future collaborations between my research group and other universities. Attending the FSA conference also allowed me to network with several professionals in the fertility industry, including clinicians, embryologists, counsellors, nurses, pharmaceutical representatives and policy makers.

The conference also exposed me to many avenues of exciting research taking place around Australia and New Zealand. The focus of the conference was directly related to my area of research (human reproduction), so it was useful to be kept up to date of current research going on the field, particularly research relating to sperm biology, the focus of my PhD. It was also reassuring to learn, via various presentations, that my research is still highly relevant to the field and generates a lot of interest.

 

Su-Ann Koh