{"id":670,"date":"2026-06-23T15:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T03:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/?p=670"},"modified":"2026-06-23T15:42:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T03:42:35","slug":"summer-student-award-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/summer-student-award-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Student Award 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <strong>277th Scientific Meeting of OMSRS<\/strong>, the <strong>2026 Pat Cragg Summer Student Awards<\/strong>, were held on 16th April at the Barnett Lecture Theatre. Ten students presented the findings from their recent summer research studentship, including two presenters online. The standard of presentations was very high, with the 10 presenters being successfully selected by the Editorial Panel from 13 high-quality abstract submissions.<\/p>\n<p>The meeting was convened by <strong>Dr Natasha Flack, Vice-President of OMSRS<\/strong>. <strong>Emeritus Professor Pat Cragg<\/strong> was in attendance and provided the closing remarks and presented the winner and runner-up with their awards. The judges for the meeting were <strong>Michelle Munro <\/strong>(Department of Physiology), <strong>Ivan Sammut<\/strong> (Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology) and <strong>Jisha Antony<\/strong> (Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine). The event was generously sponsored by the Otago Medical Research Foundation and the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_673\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-673\" style=\"width: 225px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/omsrs-group.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-673\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/omsrs-group-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/omsrs-group-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/omsrs-group.jpg 373w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-673\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Summer student speakers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The winner was <strong>Nadia Zhou <\/strong>from the Department of Physiology (Neuronal hyper-excitability leading to seizures in Alzheimer\u2019s disease). Nadia received a certificate and $500 prize money.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_672\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-672\" style=\"width: 225px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/winner-omsrs.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-672\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/winner-omsrs-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/winner-omsrs-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/winner-omsrs.jpg 243w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-672\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Winner Nadia Zhou pictured with Professor Pat Cragg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The runner-up was <strong>Juno Meyburg<\/strong> from the School of Pharmacy and Pharmacology ( Bridging the species gap: Pharmacological characterisation of the rat AMY1 receptor and its implications for translation). Juno received a certificate and $250 in prize money.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_671\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-671\" style=\"width: 225px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/2nd-omsrs.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-671\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/2nd-omsrs-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/2nd-omsrs-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/files\/2026\/06\/2nd-omsrs.jpg 267w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-671\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Runner-up Juno Meyberg from the School of Pharmacy and Pharmacology pictured with Professor Pat Cragg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Congratulations to Nadia and Juno, and to all the student speakers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 277th Scientific Meeting of OMSRS, the 2026 Pat Cragg Summer Student Awards, were held on 16th April at the Barnett Lecture Theatre. Ten students presented the findings from their recent summer research studentship, including two presenters online. The standard of presentations was very high, with the 10 presenters being successfully selected by the Editorial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45025,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84872],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-results"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45025"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/omsrs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}