In celebration of 40 years of health research impact, Menzies is delighted to announce Dr Sonja Janson and Sharif Hossain as the recipients of the Menzies 40Y40K Scholarships.

These scholarships recognise their exceptional achievements to date and their commitment to improving health outcomes for communities locally and globally.

Dr Sonja Janson

Sonja Janson is a general medicine and infectious diseases physician who has lived and worked in the Northern Territory for the past ten years. She is the Clinical Lead for the Antimicrobial Stewardship programme for NT Health. Dr Janson has co-authored and coordinated many NT Health Guidelines, most of which have been informed by her healthcare service audits/research/continuous quality improvement activities in the Top End. To date she has made a significant contribution to infectious diseases management, sepsis management and antimicrobial stewardship across the NT. 

Her planned PhD will advance knowledge of efficacious Antimicrobial Stewardship strategies in primary care and remote Australia and reduce the impact of Antimicrobial Resistance in the Northern Territory.

Sharif Hossain

Sharif Hossain has been working at icddr,b since 2010, with over a decade of experience in public health research and clinical trials. With a strong foundation in data management and applied statistics, he has developed and maintained databases for several major public health projects at icddr,b, including the Health and Demographic Household Surveillance System, Bandarban, and the Bangladesh National Malaria Survey 2013.

He has served as the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Long-Lasting Insecticidal Net (LLIN) surveys in 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2025, and has also worked as a data manager in multiple clinical trials, including FDA-approved drug studies, ensuring strict adherence to study protocols.
Sharif’s career took a significant leap forward after receiving the TDR/WHO Clinical Research and Development Fellowship (CRDF) in 2018, hosted by the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN) at the University of Oxford. During the fellowship, he worked across three sites—Oxford (UK), Melbourne, and Darwin (Australia) where he gained hands-on experience in managing and analysing large-scale clinical trial data, designing statistical analysis plans, and preparing manuscripts for publication.

Sharif's PhD will advance research on infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue, delivering solutions with global impact.