A big congratulations to Jack Manera on winning the Norris Family Award for Outstanding Author Contribution by a Graduate Research Student to a Published ‘Quality’ Scholarly Research Output at this year's Monash University Science Awards.
Jack is a final-year PhD candidate, co-supervised with Prof. Bob Wong and Dr Jake Martin. In his PhD project, Jack is investigating how human-driven environmental change affects cognition and behaviour in aquatic wildlife. Jack was first and corresponding author of research published in Environmental Science & Technology showing that environmentally realistic levels of pharmaceutical pollution can disrupt learning in wild fish. He led the research from conception through to publication and developed custom open-source software to process behavioural tracking data, strengthening the reproducibility and broader application of the work. His research demonstrates outstanding intellectual leadership and technical independence while providing important new evidence about the effects of environmental contaminants on wildlife.
Find out more about the award here: monash.edu/science/awards
Read the paper here: Manera, J.L., Moore, E.R., Martin, J.M.†, Bertram, M.G.†, Wong, B.B.M.† 2026. Neuroactive pollution disrupts cognition in fish by causing sex-specific effects on spatial learning. Environ. Sci. Technol. 60, 10640–10650. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.6c00552 | PDF † Co-senior authors.
