Funding Partners' PhD Scholarship

Awarded to Tim Smith from the Howard Florey Institute at the University of Melbourne in 2008. The Scholarship was awarded through a donation from the District 9650 Bowelscan program to Australian Rotary Health.

Tim Smith

Originally hailing from Brisbane, Tim moved to Melbourne and attended Camberwell Grammar School, where he discovered his love for science. In his final year he attended the National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) in Canberra with the support of the Rotary Club of Canterbury. His involvement with the NYSF continued throughout his undergraduate studies at the University of Melbourne where he majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. His honours year saw him move to the discipline of Bioinformatics. His PhD project is in this field.

Cancer of the bowel has a well-documented genetic component and is the second biggest cause of cancer death in Australia. Curing bowel cancer depends on early detection.

It is estimated there are over 2 million mutations in the human genome that cause disease: of these only 100,000 or so have been observed and described. New mutations are being detailed so frequently in peer-reviewed publications, the long and expensive process of putting their characteristics into a database means that patients are potentially missing out on the benefits of this newly acquired knowledge. Tim Smith's PhD Scholarship is to develop a system to make it easier for genetic mutations to be classified. He is applying natural language processing and information extraction techniques from published scientific articles to collect data on genetic variants associated with bowel cancer.

For more information on research funded by Australian Rotary Health contact:
Gerardine Grace
(02) 8837 1336
or email: gerardinegrace@arhrf.org.au

Donations to Australian Rotary Health are tax deductible and can be sent to:
PO Box 3455,
Parramatta,
NSW, 2124.
Telephone 02 8837 1900
Email arhrf@arhrf.org.au

November 2008

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