2024 Peter Mac Awards
04 December 2024
The winners of the 2024 Peter Mac staff excellence awards were announced at an intimate ceremony at Peter Mac's Parkville campus yesterday.
Chief Executive Professor Jason Payne hosted the event alongside Board Chair Professor Rosemary McKenzie. Both reflected warmly on another year of excellence in cancer research, care, and education, and sincerely thanked all nominees for their outstanding contributions.
A long-running annual tradition, these awards recognise people whose work consistently exemplifies Peter Mac's values of compassion, innovation and excellence. Designed to be inclusive, any staff member can submit a nomination, and all Peter Mac employees and volunteers are eligible.
This year, a team and individual winner was selected for almost all categories, from a record 130 nominations submitted by people from all areas of Peter Mac. The challenge of selecting one winner was a theme throughout the evening - most judges choose to acknowledge multiple runners up.
The prestigious Chief Executive’s Award, now in its fourth year, was awarded to Prehabilitaiton and Pre-Anaesthetic nurse Tara Dehm. Blown away by the dedication, thoughtfulness, generosity and consistency highlighted in Tara's multiple nominations, Professor Payne noted Tara's deep knowledge of her patients, and the very high regard of her colleagues.
Peter Mac's Patient Experience and Wellbeing team took home two awards, sweeping the Excellence Award category. Their winners were Family Violence Program Manager Natasha Sergent and the Consumer Engagement team, who support 300 volunteer consumers to advise on clinical, research and administrative projects.
It was also particularly big night for Peter Mac Research, with the winners of three annual Peter Mac awards recognising high-impact research achievements announced.
Drs Liz Christie and Nikki Burdett were awarded the prestigious Sambrook Prize for the most important published discovery during the previous two calendar years. Dr Wenxin Hu won the Peter Mac Medal for her groundbreaking work using CRISPR to program RNA-nuclease PspCas13b. Shiyi Wu received the Nicole Lundie Prize, which recognises the most outstanding Honours student.
Peter Mac’s 2024 Annual Report was also officially launched as part of the Annual General Meeting proceedings.
Find the full list of 2024 Peter Mac Award winners below.
