Two of UNSW's rising stars have won prestigious Eureka Prizes, Australia's most prestigious science awards. They were among five individual UNSW researchers and a research team vying for top honours at the 2009 Australian Museum Eureka Prizes announced last night in Sydney.

Professor Justin Gooding, from the School of Chemistry won the University of New South Wales Eureka Prize for Scientific Research for outstanding curiosity-driven scientific research.

Professor Gooding is an innovative pioneer in the field of surface chemistry, producing better biosensors for use in medicine, environmental science, defence and security.

These novel portable analytical devices have broad applications, including pesticide detection in drinking water, determining the effectiveness of diabetes treatments and developing next-generation cell chips.

After a string of breakthroughs in recent years, research by Professor Gooding's team is bearing commercial fruit with the licensing of a patent to a US-based biosensing company. The licensing deal was managed by UNSW's commercialisation division, NewSouth Innovations.

The technology enables the detection of a protein marker that provides an indication of the effectiveness of diabetes treatment. It is being adopted by CSIRO as part of a CSIRO Flagship Cluster on Sensing Systems for Monitoring Aquatic Environments. A six-university, $3.25m research cluster led by Professor Gooding is adopting the technology for the detection of inorganic pollutants, pathogens and pesticides in drinking and marine water.

Professor Brett Neilan, a Federation Fellow in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, won the Land & Water Australia Professor Peter Cullen Eureka Prize for Water Research and Innovation. The prize is awarded to an individual, team or organisation for research and innovation that has made or has the potential to make an outstanding contribution to the sustainable use and management of Australia's water resources.

Professor Neilan's research group is considered to be one of the world's leaders in the genetics of toxic cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). As its founding member, Professor Neilan has undertaken the research that has led to the discovery of all four biochemical pathways responsible for the production of potent bacterial and algal toxins that contaminate our water supplies and accumulate in seafood.

The results of this basic research and other studies of the evolution of cyanobacteria have revolutionised an entire field of environmental biology. It has also fundamentally improved our understanding of the circumstances favouring toxin-producing cyanobacterial blooms in lakes, rivers and reservoirs - critical knowledge for both environmental health and water security.

NewSouth Innovations has licensed Professor Neilan's technology to a company that will produce a diagnostic kit pinpointing the genes that cause potent toxins in blue-green algae and provide an early-warning testing system that differentiates harmful and non-harmful species. See video. Patents are being issued in some of the world’s biggest markets for this technology - in Australia, Europe, USA, Japan, and South Africa.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes. Details of the winners and finalists are available on the Australian Museum website.

Media contact: Dan Gaffney, UNSW and NSi, 0411 156 015