IMB’s Mathilde Desselle has won the Queensland Women in Technology (WiT) InfoTech Professional Award for her leadership of biomedical research programs and facilities in the fields of genomics, bioinformatics and drug discovery.
Mathilde is the program coordinator for the global, award-winning, multi-million dollar antibiotics discovery program the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD) at the IMB Centre for Superbug Solutions.
“Winning this award is a great validation of what I’ve achieved to date in health sciences and open-access research, and motivates me to keep advancing the fight against infectious disease,” Mathilde said.
“I feel very honoured to be recognised among a high level of incredibly talented women in technology.”
Funded by the Wellcome Trust and The University of Queensland, CO-ADD’s 12 month goal was to engage 20 universities and crowdsource 50,000 molecules to enter a new, open-access, antibiotic drug discovery program, with the aim to find the next antibiotic.
Since Feb 2015, CO-ADD have engaged 200 universities worldwide, sourced 120,000 molecules and received The Antibiotic Guardian Award for research in the UK and UQ award for Innovation.
The team have also received a continuing US$120,000/year grant from Google to run advanced online campaigns as part of their non-profit scheme to develop outreach campaigns from scratch, reaching 10,000 scientists per month.
Mathilde was the life sciences director on the Women in Technology Board in 2014 and 2015. She also founded and ran the WiT Step Up Professional Development Program, and is now the director of sponsorship on the WiT Board.
In 2016, she joined the newly created board of the Tech Girls Movement, providing positive role models to school girls via the creation and distribution of 20,000 free books and a national app coding competition.
“Mathilde is an experienced, energetic, engaging and enthusiastic science and technology professional who lives and breathes science and technology,” said the Women in Technology ICT Professional Award judges.
“A WiT Board member since 2014, Board Director for the Tech Girls Movement and respected guest speaker, Mathilde is a positive, passionate and deserving winner of the Infotech Professional Award,” they said.
Ms Desselle received her award at a ceremony on Friday September 2 at the Royal International Convention Centre in Brisbane.
Enquiries: CO-ADD Media, Ruth Neale, r.neale1@uq.edu.au
