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AUSTRALIAN SCIENTIST RECEIVES UNESCO AWARD
15 March 2006

The President and Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science congratulate Professor Jenny Marshall Graves on receiving a L´Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science. The award celebrates her outstanding contributions to research in the evolution of mammalian genomes.

Professor Graves was selected as the 2006 laureate for the Asia-Pacific region for the L´Oréal-UNESCO Awards, which are awarded annually to five exceptional women researchers from around world. She accepted the award from the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, at a ceremony in Paris last week.

She has an international reputation in mammalian genetics and the evolution of sex chromosomes. Her research has increased our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of X chromosome inactivation and 10 years ago her group played a pivotal role in identifying SRY, the sex-determining gene on the mammalian Y chromosome.

In 2004, she achieved a long standing ambition and began sequencing the genome of a marsupial, the tammar wallaby. The project will take five years and is being undertaken by an international team of scientists.

Professor Graves is Head of the Comparative Genomics Research Group at the Research School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University. In 1999 she was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science, and in May she will take up the position as Foreign Secretary for the Academy.

Dr Jim Peacock, President of the Australian Academy of Science, said, 'This award is a great achievement for Jenny, and recognises the excellent research she has conducted over the past 30 years.

'She is a wonderful role model for young women thinking about a career in science.'

Professor Graves is also the 2006 recipient of the Academy's Macfarlane Burnet Medal and Lecture for research in the biological sciences. She will give the lecture at the Academy's annual Science at the Shine Dome event in Canberra in May.

Professor Graves was interviewed for the Academy's 'Interviews with Australian Scientists' project; the transcript and teachers notes are available at www.science.org.au/scientists/jg.htm.