Shining a light on child health research to help all kids lead happy, healthy lives.
The Illuminate Awards are designed to connect our supporter community and the next generation of research leaders, right here in Western Australia.
Since its inception in 2021, the Illuminate initiative has now supported 21 early to mid-career researchers with more than $570,000 raised. Through these awards, our brilliant researchers at The Kids have been equipped to transform their vision into ground-breaking advancements.
At The Kids our greatest asset is our people. We are strongly invested in the future of child medical research welcoming, nurturing, and encouraging the best and most innovative Australian and international researchers. However, our best and brightest researchers face an increasingly competitive environment in securing research funding. This means substantial delays in research and even career insecurity, particularly for early and mid-career researchers.
The Illuminate Awards are funded by a generous community of donors and provide a unique opportunity for our researchers to launch their careers to new heights.
Dr Annabel Short
Dr Annabel Short was awarded the 2023 Illuminate Award supported by The Giorgetta Charity Fund, for her research focussed on new treatments for children with brain tumours within the developing brain.
Since receiving her Illuminate Award, Dr Short has received a WA Child Research Fund grant to further her investigation of new treatments to amplify the response to radiotherapy for children with aggressive brain cancer.
Dr Rachel Zemek
Dr Rachael Zemek a People’s Choice Illuminate Award winner in 2023 – now working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Fred Hutch Cancer Centre in Seattle. Her work in immunotherapy treatments for sarcoma has helped discover why some cancers do not respond well to immunotherapy. Rachael will continue her work with our WA Kids Cancer Centre with an honorary position.
Dr Vincent Mancini
Dr Vincent Mancini received an Illuminate Award supported by Helping Little Hands for his project ‘Healthy Fathers, Healthy Families, Healthy Babies’ and was recently awarded an Aspire Award by Business Events Perth. Funding from this award enabled Dr Mancini to travel to Tilburg University in the Netherlands to connect and share his ground-breaking neurodevelopment and parenting research.
