The University of Western Australia has a continual roll call of awards, scholarships and prizes presented to staff and students.
To recognise these achievements, an article is published on the UWA news page on the website and in UWA Forward on the first week of every month. If you know of great awards or achievements across the University please email .
Name: Josh Green
Achievement: Physics student Josh Green, currently a research associate with the Centre for Quantum Information, Simulation and Algorithms, has been awarded the prestigious 2025 Thomas H. Laby Medal for Excellence in Physics by the Australian Institute of Physics. This is the first time a WA student has taken out the medal, established in 2018 to recognise the most outstanding Honours or Masters thesis across all disciplines of physics by a student from an Australian university. Josh's thesis addressed the challenge of encoding information into the amplitudes of quantum systems to be processed by a subsequent quantum algorithm. He explored how tensor networks and machine learning can help prepare these quantum states efficiently. Josh is set to commence an MPhil in Machine Learning & Machine Intelligence at the University of Cambridge in October.
Name: Ivan Lin
Achievement: Associate Professor Ivan Lin and the Staying Strong with Arthritis team are finalists in the Aspire Scholarship Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research awards. Staying Strong with Arthritis created the first clinically and culturally informed arthritis education resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Aboriginal and non-Indigenous clinician-researchers worked in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, health services and artists to co-design a website, brochures and videos that promote living well with arthritis. The finalist team includes Dr Brooke Conley, Associate Professor Lin, Dr Samantha Bunzli, Jane Linton, Dr Penny O'Brien, Ryan Prehn and Professor Jonathan Bullen. The project is led by Dr Conley, a Ngiyampaa woman based at the University of Melbourne. The winner will be announced at the award ceremony on 3 September in Sydney.
Name: Ryan Lowe
Achievement: Professor Ryan Lowe, from UWA's Oceans Institute, received the Kevin Stark Memorial Award at the 2025 Coasts and Ports conference in Adelaide. Professor Lowe received the award for his paper and presentation Performance of hybrid oyster reefs for coastal protection: from design to implementation. The award honours the late Professor Kevin Stark of James Cook University who contributed to the advancement of coastal and ocean engineering within Australia. The National Committee on Coastal and Ocean Engineering established the award to foster and encourage excellence in coastal and ocean engineering across the range of professional practice, research and teaching.
Name: Jane Ginger, Rose Lehane
Achievement: Environmental engineering student Jane Ginger and mechanical engineering student Rose Lehane received the D.N. Foster Award at the 2025 Coasts and Ports conference. In recognition of Doug Foster's contribution to Australian coastal engineering, the National Committee on Coastal & Ocean Engineering created the memorial Fellowship fund. The fund is to encourage engineering students to pursue career opportunities in coastal and/or ocean engineering. Up to four awards are offered to students who are in the final two years of their first engineering degree at the time of the conference.
Name: Christopher Watson
Achievement: Christopher Watson received the PIANC Young Authors Award at the 2025 Coasts and Ports conference. The PIANC Young Authors award is given for the best paper presented at the conference. His winning paper was Comparative Performance Between Numerical and Physical Models for Predicting Wave Transmission Across Porous Artificial Reefs. Christopher is working as an Intern Coastal Engineering Consultant at Baird Australia, while studying a Masters of Professional Engineering (Environmental) at UWA. The award consisting of free membership of PIANC Australia and New Zealand for 2 years.
Congratulations UWA staff, alumni and students.
