The Thompson Prize Night was held on the first really hot day this Summer, and with temperatures approaching 40 degrees, upwards of 60 of us gathered together in the thankfully air-conditioned comfort of the Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences at Macquarie University. We were treated to an excellent series of talks given by Fionna Loughlin (RNA splicing factors, USyd), Victor Angonno (Phosphorylation and neural proteins, CMRI), Daniel Ryan (Transcription factor complexes, USyd), Nishen Naidoo (Multimeric RNA-binding proteins, Macquarie), and Philippa Stokes (Breast cancer proteins, USyd).This made life quite difficult for our judges (Jill Trewhella, Bob Graham, and Andrew Gooley), but after much discussion they awarded the 2005 Thompson Prize to Daniel Ryan, with an honourable mention to Victor Angonno.

The Lorne Travelling Fellowships were also announced: the open awards, generously sponsored by Bio-Rad and Proteome Systems Ltd were awarded to George Craft (CMRI) and Molly Clifton (USyd), respectively. The Greg-Ralston Award (for a finishing honours student who is about to start a PhD) was given to Mugdha Bhati (USyd). APAF provided drinks for the evening, and our event organizers, Tom Roberts and Louise Brown (who did an excellent job with everything) arranged lots of yummy nibbles. It was a great evening.