The Cookson Scholars Conference Organising Committee are delighted to announce the return of the Cookson Scholars Conference for 2024 and extend an invitation for the participation of Manchester-Melbourne Dual Award postgraduate researchers to present on the progress of their research.  

The conference will be hosted online via Zoom, on Wednesday,10 and Thursday, 11April 2024 (8am to 11am GMT; 5pm to 8pm AEDT). 

We warmly encourage our postgraduate researchers on the Manchester-Melbourne Dual Award to showcase their innovative research progress during this event. You’d be delivering a 10-minute presentation followed by a Q&A session, focusing either on your research topic or a topic closely aligned with your collaborative efforts. For a glimpse into the diverse range of topics covered at the previous conference, please refer to 2023’s programme. 

This conference serves as valuable platform for our dual-award postgraduate researchers to engage withyourpeers and the wider University community, delve into the interdisciplinary studies taking place within the cohort, and hone your presentation skills while benefiting from constructive feedback on ongoing work. 

Prizes of AUD$300 (1st place) and AUD$200 (2nd place) are on offer for the best presentations.  

The conference is available to all postgraduate researchers on the Cookson Scholarships, Manchester Melbourne Dual Award.  

Supervisors can nominate their postgraduate researcher(s) to take part by completing the registration form before the deadline of Friday, 15 March 2024. 

As a part of the conference celebration, we will be holding an in-person social event including prize giving for the winning presentations. These events will take place the University of Manchester and at Melbourne. 

Each presentation will be 10 minutes long followed by an additional 5 minutes for Q&A. 

• (8:45/17:45) – Akshay Kashyap: Fluoride in underground water (Dr Laura Richards and Prof Meenakshi Arora)
• (9:00/18:00) – Alisha Gudkar: Diagnosing Listening Difficulties in Children: Exploring the relationship between auditory processing, speech processing, language processing, and cognitive abilities in primary school-aged children (Dr Antje Heinrich and A/Prof Dani Tomlin)
• (9:15/18:15) – Xuehan Zhou: Understanding listening difficulties in typically-developing children as a first step to diagnosing APD (Dr Antje Heinrich and A/Prof Dani Tomlin)
• (9:30/18:30) – Eleanor Rees: Multiplex Spatial Immunophenotyping in Melanoma (Prof Caroline Dive and Prof Sarah-Jane Dawson)

9:45 –10:00/18:45–17:00 Break

• (10:00/19:00) – Ann Onuselgu: Detecting early-stage melanoma using a circulating tumour DNA multi-omic machine learning classifier (Prof Caroline Dive and Prof Sarah-Jane Dawson)
• (10:15/19:15) – Juan Reyna Monrreal: Making Sense of Urban Nature through the Residential Garden Practices of a Latin American City (Dr Leandro Minuchin and Dr Amy Hahs)
• (10:30/19:30) – Louis Cyuzuzo: Gatekeeper Ecologies and the Politics of Sand Harvesting in Mombasa: A Political Ecology of the Mombasa Port Development Program (Prof Seth Schindler and A/Prof Julie Tian Miao)
• (10:45/19:45) – Ajmal Roshan: Distribution, types and efficiency of remediation units for improved water security in Biha (Dr Laura Richards and Prof Meenakshi Arora)

Each presentation will be 10 minutes long followed by an additional 5 minutes for Q&A. 

• (8:45/17:45) – Hannah Mcnicol: Complementary convergence”: the case of Belt and Road Initiative, and Sustainable Development Goals integration (BRI-SDG integration) (Prof Seth Schindler and A/Prof Julie Tian Miao)
• (9:00/18:00) – Ronald Leon: Controlling Charging Events in TENGs via Contact Electrification, Charge Induction, and Electrostatic Discharge (Prof Aravind Vijayaraghavan and Prof Amanda Ellis)
• (9:15/18:15) – Lucy Mcelhone: Graphene and Nanoparticle Hybrid Materials For Energy Storage Applications (Prof Aravind Vijayaraghavan and Prof Amanda Ellis)
• (9:30/18:30) – Mia Wansbrough: Mimicking nature's vivid colours (Dr Ahu Gumrah Dumanli-Parry and Prof Devi Stuart-Fox)

9:45-10:00/18:45-19:00 Break

• (10:00/19:00) – Ming Yu: Gas separations using PIM-based thin film composite membranes (Prof Peter Budd and A/Prof Colin Scholes)
• (10:15/19:15) – Larry Ger Aragon: Precipitation in the Arctic and Southern Ocean: New insights from Aircraft and Ship-borne Observations (Dr Jonathan Crosier and Dr Yi Huang)
• (10:30/19:30) –Oliver Sinclair: [Title TBC] (Prof Tim Somervaille and Prof Mark Dawson)
• (10:45/19:45) – Yuhan Wong: The real-life benefits of hearing preservation cochlear implantation in children (Prof Karolina Kluk-De Kort and A/Prof Karyn Galvin)