Dr Kate Hayward wins Early Excellence in Science Award in Berlin

Dr Kate Hayward, an NHMRC Early Career Research Fellow in the AVERT Early Rehabilitation Research Group, has been awarded the Bayer Early Excellence in Science Award for Medicine.

The Early Excellence in Science Award is conferred annually to biologists, chemists and medical researchers who have completed their PhD within the last five years. It recognises young scientists who have contributed new insights to their fields with their research. The award is endowed with € 10,000 per category.

We caught up with Kate after she returned from Berlin in June, where the award was presented at the Bayer Foundation Alumni Day.

Dr Kate Hayward presenting her research at the Bayer Foundation Alumni Day 

You recently returned from Berlin where you were awarded the Bayer Early Excellence in Science award - congratulations! So what was this award for?

The award was for contributions of people early in their career within specific domains of science. Mine was for medicine, awarded for my contribution to understanding stroke recovery in people with significant loss of arm and hand functions.

They only give out three annually, and I’m fairly sure no other Australian has ever been awarded one.

Attending the Alumni Day in Berlin was a great opportunity. Winners were invited to give a talk about their research. It was great to put stroke recovery forward on that kind of platform. It was also interesting to see the other side of Big Pharma and hear about some of the projects they were supporting. There was a lot of lateral thinking and a willingness to remove barriers. For example, there were people working out how to grow plants in space, and how to make fridges that don’t require electricity so that vaccines and medicines can be stored in developing countries.

Tell us about your research.

My research looks into how we can improve recovery after stroke, focusing on people with severe loss of movement in their arm and hand. When I say severe, I mean loss of function that makes it really hard for stroke survivors to shrug their shoulders, let alone open and close their hands. Arm and hand use is integral to all our daily tasks, whether it’s gesturing during a speech, embracing your children in a hug, or picking up your morning cup of coffee. But up to 75% of stroke survivors lose the use of their arm and hand early after stroke, and recovery is really variable - it’s almost a fifty-fifty chance as to whether someone with these severe impairments will recover, so we need to understand what facilitates and limits their recovery.

In order to determine why some people recover and some don’t, we are using brain imaging to see what has been damaged by the stroke, and whether signals from the brain are still able to be sent down to the arm and hand. We are looking from a clinical perspective as well, to see if much bigger doses of therapy started earlier post-stroke can place patients on a different (more accelerated) recovery trajectory.


How will your research benefit stroke survivors in the long term?

Helping people get better recovery of arm and hand function means that they can ultimately get back to doing what matters to them - giving their children a hug, drinking their morning cup of coffee, playing golf. It’s about enabling stroke survivors to do the things that matter.


What are you most excited for this year in stroke research?

Two things! We have funding from the Stroke Foundation and Heart Foundation to start my first trial since coming back from Canada - Very Early Start to Personalised Upper limb Rehabilitation (VESPUR) after stroke. In this trial, we’ll be able to see if early, high dose therapy is feasible in people with severe impairments.

The second thing I’m excited about is being part of the second Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable, which will occur with the World Stroke Congress in Montreal in October. I was part of the first one, and it was great to work with a dedicated group of leading stroke experts from around the world who wanted to push stroke recovery research onto the next frontier. It will be exciting to see what comes out of this one.


You tell me you’re looking for PhD students!

Yes! If you’re interested in the biology of stroke recovery, particularly with a therapeutic focus, whether that’s using neuroimaging, TMS, high dose therapy, or even the VESPUR trial, contact me. Or if you’ve just got a cracking idea, pitch it - we need big thinking in stroke so if you have a big idea, bring it to us!


If you would like to contact Kate Hayward about her research or potential projects, you can email her at kate.hayward@florey.edu.au.