Denis Burnham Award for Doctoral Student Career Transition

About the Award

This award is a generous gift from former MARCS Director, Emeritus Professor Denis Burnham, and named in honour of him to celebrate his passion for research excellence and indefatigable interest in student supervision and achievements, and postdoctoral career opportunities.

Professor Burnham’s distinguished research standing is reflected in winning more than $17M in research grants including 18 ARC Large/Discovery Project grants, four SPIRT/Linkage Project grants, and Node Leadership of the HEARing Co-operative Research Centre. He is the author of over 200 journal articles, book chapters and refereed conference proceedings, and has edited nine books.

The aim of the award is to inspire and support senior doctoral students in the planning and transition from PhD to local or international postdoctoral opportunities in academic, industry (including government), or community settings.

The annual award of up to $5,000 is open to PhD candidates who are in the final (third) year of their doctoral degree at MARCS Institute, expected to submit their thesis within 12 months from the time of application.

2026 Winner

Martina Ventura

Martina’s research explores the neural basis of object categorisation in the infant brain – advancing our understanding of how young minds make sense of the world.

Previous winners of this award

2025 – Nazanin Sheykh Andalibi

2024 – Jessica Chin