Venture capital veteran Bill Ferris is the new chair of the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (supported by superannuation funds and the feds). He replaces Peter Beattie, who remains on the board.

Five Australian based researchers have new funding from the Human Frontier Science Programme, (Strasbourg based and funded by mainly G20 countries); Peter Franks (Uni Sydney) will research heat stress in plants. Alex de Marco (Monash U) is supported to investigate, “time-resolving the mechanism of exocytosis in situ,” (sorry, no idea). Antoine van Ouen (Uni Wollongong) has funding for work on, “high through-put single-molecule evolution.” Anna Wang (UNSW) will work on “propagation of single synthetic cells. Martin Whiting (Macquarie U) has a grant for evolution among lizards on islands.