The ACU is pleased to announce the winners of this year's Titular Fellowships. The awards cover various academic disciplines, from information technology to food science, and will see Fellows visit prestigious institutions across the Commonwealth between October 2015 and September 2016. This year's Fellows are:

Swansea University Fulton Fellowship has been awarded to Doctor Helen Rawson, Research Fellow at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research will focus on developing best practice care for ethnic elderly patients, which is culturally sensitive, as well as defining cross-national research methods.

The George Weston Limited, Canada, Fellowship has been jointly awarded to two recipients: Doctor Anne Galloway from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Doctor Niranjalie Perera from Wayamba University, Sri Lanka.

Doctor Galloway will be working collaboratively with experts at the University of Exeter, UK, focussing on livestock welfare and humane slaughter methods. While Doctor Perera will be visiting the University of Reading, UK, to investigate whether fat-free frying methods can successfully replace deep-fried foods, which currently contribute to high rates of cardiovascular diseases and Type II Diabetes in the Sri Lankan diet.

The Gordon and Jean Southam Fellowship recipient is Doctor David Phipps from York University, Canada. Doctor Phipps will undertake his fellowship at Coventry University, UK, where he will develop 'knowledge broker competencies', assessment tools and capacity building for this increasingly important research management role.

The Jacky McAleer Memorial Fellowship is awarded to those specialising in the field of Information Technology. This year's fellowship will enable Md Anwarul Islam from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, to undertake research at The InterPARES Trust Project at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research specialises in cloud-based technologies, specifically looking at commercial cloud technologies.

This year's University of Manitoba Fellowship will see Professor Derek Chadee, head of the Department of Behavioural Sciences at the University of the West Indies' Trinidad campus, establish the first Caribbean-Canadian research agenda on fear of crime rates. His research will also look at the disconnect between official crime statistics and unreported crime rates.

The University of Oxford Fellowship has been awarded to Doctor Murray Cox, Associate Professor in Computational Biology at Massey University, New Zealand. Doctor Cox will work with faculty members at St John's College to look at the links between human genetics and susceptibility to infectious disease; his expertise in computational modelling and big data will help inform the nature of this research.

Doctor Manisha Yasanthi Gunasekera from the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka is the recipient of the Wighton Titular Fellowship in Engineering. Doctor Gunasekera will work with Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, to develop her laboratory teaching capacity, with an emphasis on chemical plant safety, inherently safer design and loss prevention.

The ACU Titular Fellowships are awarded on an annual basis to academic staff at ACU member institutions. Each fellowship serves a specific purpose and is dedicated to supporting and developing the exchange of knowledge, skills and resources across the Commonwealth.

You can find out more about the ACU Titular Fellowships here