It has been a stellar week for MOBIUS’ lead and early-career researchers! Congratulations to:

• Professor Chamindie Punyadeera (Griffith University Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics), a finalist for the QIMR Berghofer Woman of Influence Award at the 2026 Life Sciences Queensland Ltd (LSQ) GENE Awards – Queensland’s flagship of achievement across the life sciences sector
• MOBIUS PhD Candidate, Hansani Maussawa (La Trobe University), for winning Best Poster Prize at the 77th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry, 6 -11 September 2026, Sydney, Australia. Her poster was titled ‘Development of an aptamer-based biosensor for the detection of cocaine’.
• MOBIUS Affiliated PhD candidate, Vatsala Pithaih (La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science (LIMS)), for being awarded 1st prize for Best Flash Talk Presentation at the Second Australian Future Sensing Conference (Melbourne, 2026). Her talk was titled, ‘Ultrasensitive electrochemical detection of the merkel cell carcinoma biomarker miR-375 using duplex-specific DNase amplification’.
• And MOBIUS Affiliated PhD candidate, Thiago Pimenta (La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science (LIMS)), for being awarded 2nd prize for Best Flash Talk Presentation at the Second Australian Future Sensing Conference (Melbourne, 2026). His talk was titled, ‘Electrochemical biosensing approach to biomarker discovery: towards point-of-care cancer detection’.
   
  We are very proud of their accomplishments!