Appointment of five-year Alice Baker and Eleanor Shaw Gender Equity Fellow

Institute news

We are delighted to announce that our distinguished five-year Alice Baker and Eleanor Shaw Gender Equity Fellow is Dr Morag Young, a leading authority on the role of hormones in cardiovascular disease and head of the cardiovascular endocrinology laboratory at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research.

Dr Young was chosen from a very competitive list of applicants, with this prestigious Fellowship made available by the Baker Institute and our long-time supporters, the Baker Foundation.

Baker Institute Director, Professor Tom Marwick says the Fellowship serves as a cornerstone of the Institute’s gender equity and diversity program, and heralds our commitment to recruiting and retaining more senior female scientists.

Professor Marwick says a lack of senior female researchers is a critical issue facing many Australian research organisations and one worth highlighting in the lead up to International Women’s Day on 8 March.

“We are very pleased to welcome Dr Young back to the Institute where she first undertook postgraduate studies working with former Institute Director, Professor John Funder AO, who is well known for creating an important link between endocrinology and cardiology,” he says.

“Since then, Dr Young has established herself as an international leader in the field of mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) pathophysiology, and more broadly, how cellular mechanisms lead to cardiac fibrosis and inflammation, which leads to heart failure.”

By way of background, Dr Young’s association with the Baker Institute began when she completed a CJ Martin Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Institute and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre.

Dr Young later joined the Prince Henry’s Institute (now Hudson Institute of Medical Research) in 2002 as a Senior Research Officer and established the Cardiovascular Endocrinology Laboratory in 2005.

She received the Best Basic Research Paper published in Hypertension in 2009 from the American Heart Association for her work on the role MR in macrophages and regulation of cardiac remodelling and blood pressure control. Dr Young’s work has been funded by eight NHMRC project grants (four of them as CIA) as well as by industry, the National Heart Foundation and philanthropic organisations.

Dr Young serves as a Senior Editor for The Journal of Endocrinology and the Journal of Molecular Endocrinology and the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

She also played a lead advocacy role working with the Australian Association of Medical Research Institute’s campaign for the $20B Medical Research Future Fund, appearing in the ‘What’s the Fuss’ campaign to help the community better understand the important role of medical research.

Professor Marwick says this is a very exciting appointment and we look forward to Dr Young returning to the Institute in May.