Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in PhD Research

Chancellor's Prize

The Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in PhD Research recognises candidates whose research is among approximately the top 1 per cent of PhD completions. An additional award may be made to an Indigenous candidate. You are eligible for nomination if you completed your degree in the previous year.

Nominations are made by faculties on the basis of:

• Recognition and impact of the research, demonstrating outstanding significance
• Publications or other research outputs that arise from or relate to your thesis
• Recognition of the research (by professional or community organisations, prizes and awards, invitations to conferences, etc).

Preference is given to theses that are passed without amendment. Theses passed with minor revision changes may also be considered.

2026 winners

Congratulations to the 2026 winners of The Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in PhD Research.

Humanities, Creative Arts and Social Sciences

• Natalie IRONFIELD (School of Social and Political Sciences)
  Lipstick on pigs: Critical criminology as an accomplice to the Australian colonial state
• Thomas MCGEE (Melbourne Law School)
  Syria's changing statelessness landscape: 2011 as critical juncture

Science and Engineering

• Saampras GANESAN (Department of Biomedical Engineering)
  High-precision brain feedback-guided meditation training
• Lalani JAYAWEERA (Department of Infrastructure Engineering)
  Incorporating climate change projections of extreme rainfall for design flood estimation
• Mishal GUDKA (School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystems Sciences)
  Assessing resilience and collapse risk of coral reefs to support conservation action
• Shaban SULEJMAN (School of Physics)
  Metasurfaces for Tunable All-Optical Image Processing
• Cameron RAW (Melbourne Veterinary School)
  Evaluation of One Health intervention strategies against zoonotic canine hookworms and threadworms in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Northern Australia

Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences

• Cait BEDDOWS (Department of Anatomy & Physiology, School of Biomedical Sciences)
  The role of pathogenic hypothalamic extracellular matrix remodelling in the development of metabolic disease
• Justin REN (Department of Surgery (Royal Melbourne Hospital), Melbourne Medical School)
  Total and multiple arterial revascularisation in coronary artery bypass grafting surgery
• Elyssia BOURKE (Department of Paediatrics (Royal Children’s Hospital), Melbourne Medical School)
  Management of paediatric acute severe behavioural disturbance in the Emergency Department

Future nominations

Supervisors will be invited in February 2027 to complete a nomination form [PDF] to be submitted to their head of department for candidates who completed in the previous year.

Past Winners

View previous Chancellor Prize winners

Past winners