Two major peptide conferences were held on the Gold Coast this week, the Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis Meeting and the 14^th Australian Peptide Conference (APC). With a number of international guests as well as peptide scientists from around the country, the calibre of research shared was very high! Many of our Centre members presented at the conferences and several were recognised with awards.

At the APC, CIPPS had the privilege of hosting a full afternoon session, chaired by Centre Associate Investigator Norelle Daly and Richard Lewis. The weather may have been dreary, but the stimulating talks kept delegates’ spirits up! Chief Investigator (CI) Glenn King opened the session by introducing our vision, our team, and research themes Discover, Decode and Develop. Following Glenn was CI Challis, Craik group researcher Nicole Lawrence, CI Colgrave, CI Malins and CI Jolliffe. Their talks spanned key CIPPS research areas including food security, drug discovery, synthetic methodology and anion sensing. The CIPPS APC session was a wonderful opportunity to introduce our Centre to the wider peptide community and we look forward to engaging with the community further as we move forward!

Excitingly, at the APC, Associate Professor Max Cryle from Monash University was awarded the prestigious Tregear Award. This award was first presented in 2013 in honour of Geoff Tregear, an important pioneer of peptide science in Australia. The award is presented biennially at the APC to recognise and celebrate outstanding research in the field of peptide chemistry and biology. Max received this award in recognition of his important work studying nature’s non-ribosomal peptide synthesis, check out this video to hear him explaining how this works. Congratulations Max!

Success was achieved at all levels within CIPPS with many PhD students receiving poster prizes across the two meetings. At the Solid Phase Meeting Karen Milewska from the Malins group at ANU and Lucas Kambanis from the Payne group at USyd received prizes. At the APC, CIPPS students shone again with 4 more prizes being awarded to: Tristan Tyler from the Craik group, Kimberley Biggs from the King group, Dhanya Karipal Padinjare Veedu from the Malins group and Junming He from the Nitsche group. Well done all and we can’t wait for the next peptide conferences in 2 years’ time!