刚刚收到澳大利亚Kim McKay女士来信，告知悉尼大学的Simon Ho博士荣获了Macquarie University Eureka Prize。2005年，DNA Barcoding第二届国际会议在英国自然历史博物馆召开。我认识了当时还在Oxford大学读博士的Simon。自此我们一直保持学术交流和合作。我很荣幸作为他申报该奖项的署名推荐人之一。祝贺Simon，他的工作被引目前已经超过7000次，果然是这个领域内快速升起的新星！

ASSOC PROF SIMON HO

ARC QEII Research Fellow

School of Biological Sciences

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Edgeworth David Building A11

Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Simon在Sydney大学的网址：http://sydney.edu.au/science/people/simon.ho.php 

Simon的Google Scholar：http://scholar.google.com.cn/citations?user=Qr-P8DgAAAAJ&hl=en

发件人: Niall Byrne <niall@scienceinpublic.com.au>

日期: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 at 8:18 PM

至: Chao-Dong ZHU <zhucd@ioz.ac.cn>

主题: Tuning the clock of evolution: winner of 2014 Eureka Prize for Early Career Researcher announced

Sent on behalf of Ms Kim McKay, Director and CEO, the Australian Museum

Dear Chao-Dong,

I’m pleased to announce that Simon Ho from the University of Sydney is the winner of the Macquarie University Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher.

The other finalists were:

·         the Extremes Team, Drs Lisa Alexander, Sarah Perkins and Markus Donat of the University of New South Wales, who quantified what temperature extremes Australia can expect if we do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions

·         University of Sydney’s Associate Professor Richard Payne, who has developed synthetic vaccines to turn our own immune systems into cancer-destroying machines.

If you’re on Twitter please share the news with the hashtag #eureka14.

Kind regards,

Niall Byrne,

Science in Public

Tuning the clock of evolution

Macquarie University Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher

For those who work with ‘molecular clocks’, evolutionary biologist Simon Ho is the ultimate clockmaster.

By using fossils to calibrate the molecular clock, comparing evolutionary rates in different species, and crunching huge genome data sets, Simon Ho from the University of Sydney has shown that modern humans separated from Neanderthals about 200,000 years later than we once thought. He’s also shown that the Irish Potato Famine fungus is still alive in the Americas, and has become potentially even more dangerous.

For these and other contributions to evolutionary science, Simon has been awarded the Macquarie University Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher.

Molecular clocks are how biologists explain how quickly different organisms evolve. By knowing the rate at which DNA mutates we can understand the ancient evolution of humans, predict how fast species will adapt to changing environments, and estimate the speed at which viruses and other pathogens could change and become dangerous.

“Simon’s work has had a colossal impact on researchers’ understanding of the variation in evolutionary rates at the genetic level” Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay said.

Simon has had an extremely productive scientific career for such a young researcher, receiving two research fellowships from the Australian Research Council (2008-10 and 2011-15), as well as receiving Australian Research Council Discovery Project funding (2013-15).

His scientific rigour and excellence was recognised with the Alan Wilton Award from the Genetics Society of Australasia (2011), rewarding outstanding contributions to the field of genetics research by early career scientists.

Over the past five years, Simon’s work has produced 73 peer-reviewed journal articles and five encyclopaedia articles. His research also informs and enables many others in the field, reflected by the number of times that his work has been cited—over 7000 citations.

The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes are the country’s most comprehensive national science awards. The Eureka Prizes have been rewarding science since 1990—celebrating 25 years in 2014.

Further information:

·         Associate Professor Simon Ho, simon.ho@sydney.edu.au

For media enquiries please contact the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes media team:

·         Niall Byrne, niall@scienceinpublic.com.au, 0417 131 977

·         Errol Hunt, errol@scienceinpublic.com.au, 0423 139 210

Watch the winner’s video.

For more information about all the winners visit australianmuseum.net.au/eureka.

And you can watch all the finalist videos here.