Honours Program

Students interested in undertaking a research project for their 4th-year honours thesis are invited to enquire about opportunities with the Critical Care Research Group.

Students are selected based on their CV, academic record, motivation and work ethic, and can expect to be involved in ground-breaking pre-clinical research trials across a range of exciting projects. Students are supported by clinical researchers, scientists and engineers.

Honours Students at the Critical Care Research Group develop outstanding problem-solving skills while learning how to address pre-clinical and clinical research issues. Mentored by Post Doctorate and Academic Staff, Honours Students quickly realise their potential and find confidence within a dynamic research environment. Honours Students are encouraged to challenge and question any principle of standard clinical practice—we believe that from young and bright minds, medicine is innovated.

Honours Students have the benefit of choosing from a wide range of pre-clinical and clinical research projects, focusing on cell-molecular biology at the STARLab, complex pre-clinical experiments in critical diseases models, or you could help develop novel medical devices at the bio-engineer ICETLab.

The Critical Care Research Group Honours Program

  • Access to one of Australia's most comprehensive learning experiences in the field of critical care medicine

  • Be mentored by Post Doctoral and Academic Staff to realise your leadership potential, develop practical skills and sharpen critical thinking

  • A streamlined pathway to a career in academia and research

  • A wide range of pre-clinical and clinical research projects to work and study within

2022 Honours Program

Research Projects at the Critical Care Research Group range from large pre-clinical experiments to biological characterisation of tissue samples, and the translation of research findings to improve current clinical outcomes. While pre-clinical studies are a major focus, through collaborations with other research partners, we encourage multi-disciplinary projects.

Read more about current and potential Honours Projects below and download the information kit or CCRG Research Prospectus to learn more. Expressions of Interest to join the program can be submitted via the form below.

  • Students will be involved in a multi-disciplinary team across the 3 biggest cardiac hospitals in Australia. The project aims to improve the quantity and quality of donor hearts through organ reconditioning and new donor sources, as well as understanding ischemia-induced molecular damage to cardiomyocytes during transplant. This study has been translated to clinical trial currently taken place in Australia and New Zealand.

    The objective of this study is to expand our understanding of mechanism of action of a novel organ perfusion device.

  • ECMO is a life saving device for patients with severe cardiac and/or respiratory dysfunction. Its use in hospital has increased >10x since 2010, yet, there are still key unmet clinical needs over its application. Student will have the opportunity to work on a prototype ECMO machine, jointly supported by clinicians and industry partners. The study will examine the interaction and physiological consequence of various blood flow conditions in a preclinical model of cardiogenic shock.

  • The main objective of ICU is to support and restore organ function of the critically ill. Currently, functional assessments have been used as surrogate for organ condition, which are plagued with issues and unintentionally caused additional harm, such as ventilator-induced lung injury. This program is to explore the use of recent discovery in genetic biomarker to detect organ-specific injury in both preclinical and clinical cohort.

  • Student will be working on one of the largest clinical database of transfusion records in the world, over 700,000 transfusion and 100,000 patients. This study aims to investigate and explore potential correlation between patient outcome and use of blood product, including age, patient demography, disease, etc.

  • Our group is currently leading a global observational study of COVID-19 ICU patients, currently collected >15,000 patient records across 380 hospitals. Student will have the opportunity to work with leading clinical researchers across the world to investigate research questions associated with COVID-19. Due to the nature of the study, this project will only be available to students with a strong background in statistic or programming in R, Python, STATA, for example.

 

Talvin Lee

“I remember during my initial visit how welcoming and inclusive everyone at CCRG was. I got to greet everyone, see all of the work they do, and had a really nice chat to my potential honours supervisor. Ultimately, the CCRG is involved in very cutting edge and relevant research (as we’ve seen from the pandemic) and everyone at the lab is super passionate about their work. This makes it a great environment for conducting learning and conducting research so make sure to bring your passion too! CCRG also supports their students pursuing opportunities to set themselves apart from competition. Because of this, I have achieved goals that I wouldn’t have expected to accomplish otherwise. In one year alone the CCRG helped me apply and attain a $10,000 new investigator grant as a principal investigator, publish two peer-reviewed articles, and presented my findings at a research conference. I feel like I could not have gotten these opportunities anywhere else but as a student at the Critical Care Research Group.”

- Talvin Lee, Past Participant, Critical Care Research Group Honours Program

Expressions of Interest

Please complete the form below to register your interest in joining the Critical Care Research Group Honours Program.