Children’s Medical Research Institute’s cancer research program, ProCan® has ended the year on a celebratory note after winning Research Australia’s Highly Commended Award in the category of Data Innovation.
Research Australia, the country’s peak body for health and medical research, held its annual award ceremony on Thursday 9th December to celebrate the teams behind Australia’s most innovative health and medical research.
Federal Minister for Health, The Hon Greg Hunt as keynote speaker and other distinguished guests, including the Secretary for Health, Dr Brendan Murphy, and many MPs, lauded the bright future of medical research.
ProCan is an international cancer research program that is working toward analysing many thousands of cancer samples obtained from around the world and representing all types of cancer. The team is building a database of key molecular information about cancer that will facilitate more personalised treatment for individual patients’ cancers and eventually, to make major new discoveries about cancer.
The data innovation project nominated for the award involved developing the ability to quantitatively compare the data obtained from the cancer samples, regardless of when these samples were processed, and on a scale that has never seen before. Research Australia’s CEO Nadia Levin said it had broken new ground.
ProCan’s Cancer Data Science Group Leader Dr Qing Zhong who accepted the award on behalf of ProCan said the team felt honoured to be recognised with the Highly Commended Award in Data Innovation.
“On behalf of the ProCan team, I thank Research Australia, for recognising the crucial role of data science in medical research with this award. I’m grateful to my fellow scientists, both colleagues and collaborators, and to all those who work behind the scenes to help ProCan succeed.’’