Photo of the week: Visualisation as you've never seen it before!

Professor Paul Bonnington demonstrating Monash's CAVE2(TM) facility, Monash's Immersive Visualisation Platform at the Clayton campus. CAVE stands for CAVE Assisted Virtual Environment. CAVE2 is a trademark of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. The backdrop image is of neural pathways in 3D. See more:

• About the facility: http://monash.edu/mivp
• CAVE2(TM) photo gallery (Imagery courtesy of UIC EVL, CALIT2 UCSD, Australian Synchrotron, KAUST, and Monash University)
• CAVE2 video (2:26 mins)
• More CCS photo galleries on Google plus
• CCS photo gallery index on the CCS Intranet

Season's Greetings from Head of School

Steve rising to the challenge of sounding
convincing in "Explain my graph" at the
2014 CCS postgraduate symposium...

I would like to thank all academic, professional, teaching, administrative and support staff for their hard work in 2014. Although we face difficult times from a funding perspective, the School continues to flourish and grow through the efforts of its dedicated staff.

I would also like to thank our dedicated and enthusiastic postgraduate and Honours students for their commitment to their research projects and participation in wider academic life. 22 of our PhD students were awarded their degrees during 2014, an outstanding effort.

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and safe and peaceful New Year and look forward to further enhancing our excellence in research, teaching and patient care in 2015.

Steve Jane, Head of Central Clinical School

Editorial for final 2014 CCS Blog news

Central Clinical School web page visits - weekly rate has doubled over 2014 with a total of 1.5M views

(Figures exclude Monash visitors). CCSMonash Google+ averaging around 1000 views/day.

This is the final edition of the CCS local enews for 2014. Collectively, the school has had a phenomenal output and profile and it's a bit like riding rapids to represent you all to the wider world! Your work has had literally millions of views over the year (no exaggeration, see graph above).
Your feedback on our news services would be very much appreciated. Please take our survey (only 8 questions).

Have a happy and safe Christmas and New Year break. Enews will resume in February 2015.

Regards, the 2014 team:
Julia Veitch, Vithya Premkumar and Dussy Kuttner

HDR seminars and CCS events

All event notices are maintained on the CCS Events calendars (including local events such as professional development and trade fairs and HDR calendars). For a consolidated view, details of events and to see all events and deadlines, see Announcements.  Various Departments have their own calendars: See CCS seminar index: www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/events/seminars.html

What's on for this week - mostly Christmas things

Tue Dec 16	11:30 1:00 PM	►	ACBD/Medicine seminar: Dr Hong Bin Liu Confirmation of PhD candidature: Ms Britt Christensen
Wed Dec 17	12:00 noon 12:30 PM	►	CCS Middle Managers Christmas lunch MAPrc Christmas lunch: contact MAPrc@monash.edu
Thu Dec 18	10:30 AM 7:00 PM	►	Russell Evan's farewell morning tea - all welcome ACBD Christmas party: contact roisin.briscoe@monash.edu
Fri Dec 19	12:30 PM	►	Immunology Kris Kringle and pot luck lunch: contact Nina.McLean@monash.edu

Forthcoming events

Mon Dec 22	1:00 PM	►	MAPrc Kris Kringle
Tues Dec 23		►	Last working day before University shutdown. First working day back in 2015 is Monday 5 Jan.

Congratulations to prize winners Chris Brooks and Laura Blair-West

Mrs Candice Rosengarten awarding
the prize plate to Chris Brooks

Congratulations to CCS students and graduates for recent wins.

Chris Brooks (Department of Surgery) won the D.S. Rosengarten Surgical Trainee Research Prize for his presentation, "Smoking increases postoperative respiratory complications and unplanned return to Theate in vascular surgical patients". Read more

Laura Blair-West (MAPrc) is a BMedSc(Hons) student investigating how social behaviour is affected with direct current stimulation. She won best poster presentation at the Australian Cognitive Science conference (seen here presenting her poster at the September 2014 AMREP EMCR conference, which she also won). Read more.

Congratulations to Amber Moore and Casey Lo, on their postgraduate degree awards!

Congratulations to Ms Amber Moore, who has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy on 2 December 2014. Her thesis was titled "Philosophical and professional issues in Chinese medicine". Amber was enrolled in the Department of Medicine, and supervised by Professor Paul Komesaroff and Dr Kylie O'Brien. Well done Amber!

Congratulations to Mr Casey Lo, who has been awarded the degree of Master of Surgery. Casey Lo is a Thoracics Fellow at St Vincent's Private Hospital and completed his degree under the supervision of Drs Silvana Marasco and Deidre Murphy.  Read more

Recent publications with EMCR authors

The EMCR Times no.14 included recent publications with EMCR authors, which if you didn't see there, you can see below. Congratulations to all our hard working graduate students and postdocs.

EMCR Times: No. 14 now out

Cartoon: Cathy Wilcox

The EMCRTimes No.14 is now out, with highlights, farewells, recent publications, useful links, thankyou's, photos, cartoons and more.

The committee has had a very active and successful year, including the establishment of a seed grant program and a very well attended conference. They are seeking nominations for next year's committee.

See more:

•  www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/ecr/
•  CCS student profiles
• AMREP EMCR Facebook
• EMCR Google plus page

Participants sought: Investigating the health benefits of dietary fibre

Leek and prawn risotto, on the menu

Healthy volunteers are required for a study investigating the optimal increase in dietary fibre to improve bowel movement and gut bacteria. This study involves volunteers consuming nutritionally balanced diets that vary only in their dietary fibre content, over an entire period of 12 weeks. All cooked food will be supplied. Participants will be asked to purchase the fresh food component of the diet. All the diets have been designed and prepared by a fully qualified and experienced professional chef.

See more: www.med.monash.edu/cecs/gastro/clin-trials/ct-veitch.html

Farewell to our retiring Technical Services Manager, Russell Evans

CCS's Technical Services Manager, Mr Russell Evans, is retiring (but not shy). He has worked many years for Central Clinical School and in its previous incarnation, Central and Eastern Clinical School.

Thanks Russell for all your dedicated service, problem solving and schlepping over the years!

Everyone is invited to Russell's farewell morning tea on Thursday 18 Dec, Tea room, Level 6, Alfred Centre. Enquiries to Catherine Wong, catherine.wong@monash.edu or x30640

Welcome to our new staff

Welcome to our new staff!

• Dr Shoshana Sztal-Mazer, Teaching Associate for UMED. Shoshana is an endocrinologist at the Alfred.
• Dr Anna Korin, Teaching Associate for UMED. Anna is a supervisor of Intern Training at the Alfred.
• Miss Angela Weber, Professional staff, Department of Surgery
• Mr Peter Frost, Professional staff, Peninsula Clinical School
• Ms Ellen Mathieson, Technical Assistant, BAFF lab, Department of Immunology
• Dr Jodie Palmer, Department of Gastroenterology
• Mrs Cheryl Berndt, Technical Assistant, ACBD
• Ms Beatriz De Garcillan, Research Fellow, BAFF lab, Department of Immunology
• Dr Alison Thorburn, Teaching Associate for Department of Immunology
• Dr Janette Allison, Teaching Associate for Department of Immunology
• Dr Sandra Walker, Research Fellow, Melbourne Sexual Health Clinic

Survey of staff's fitness and wellbeing by Faculty: Responses due 16 Jan 2015

Two years ago Monash offered staff a health check and, from this, a report was developed on the health and wellbeing of our staff. It identified a number of issues that may be addressed by an increase in physical and mental health activity.

Therefore, in 2015, we would like to promote participation in the University’s health and wellbeing program.  Items on offer will include fitness programs like yoga and pilates, general health information sessions, nutrition based programs and mindfulness/resilience programs to name a few.

To assist us in tailoring the wellbeing program for our faculty, your feedback to the 2014 Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences Staff Health and Wellbeing Survey would be extremely valuable. The survey closes on 16 January, 2015.

Detailed information on the SWAP programs available go to http://www.monash.edu/ohs/wellbeing/swap.html.

Finalised programs to be offered to the faculty will be available early in 2015.