RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP HONOURS HARVEY COATES

Earbus co-founder Paul Higginbotham with PhD student, Ayesha Zahid

Prior to the pandemic, Earbus Foundation announced a partnership with Griffith University in Queensland to create the Harvey Coates Research Fellowship. Honouring our Clinical Patron, Professor Harvey Coates AO, Earbus is proudly supporting the funding of a PhD student to conduct Otitis media research at the university's Institute for Glycomics on the Gold Coast.

We were delighted this month for Paul Higginbotham, our Executive Director and co-founder, to meet scholarship awardee, Ayesha Zahid. Paul received a tour of the Institute's new facilities as well as updates on the progress made across their cancer, infectious diseases and neurological disorders research programs since his last visit, which was in 2019.

Ms Zahid is now undertaking her PhD titled ‘Developing a new vaccine to prevent middle ear infection in Australian Indigenous children’, expanding on a successful pilot program which developed a novel 'pilot conjugate vaccine' that targets two of the main bacteria that cause middle ear infection, namely, Moraxella catarrhalis (Mcat) and Non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi).

Established in 2000, the Institute for Glycomics is the only institute of its kind in Australia and one of only a handful in the world. It is widely considered a world leader in the discovery and development of next-generation drugs, vaccines and diagnostics that fight diseases of global impact. 

Learn more about the Institute here.