Fogarty Scholars meet with Australian of the Year

As part of the Leadership Program, Fogarty Scholars have the opportunity to meet with exceptional leaders in the community.  At the latest Leaders Series event scholars met with Craig Challen, SC, OAM – joint winner of the 2019 Australian of the Year.  

You will likely recognise Craig Challen from the news. As an experienced technical diver, Craig played a pivotal role in the 2018 cave rescue operation in Thailand to evacuate 12 children and an adult from the flooded Tham Luang Cave system. 

He was awarded the Star of Courage (SC) and Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) by the Governor-General of Australia for his role in the rescue and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Direkgunabhorn by the King of Thailand. He is also a veterinary surgeon and all round exceptional West Australian.

Scholar Connor McLaughlin writes about five key insights he learnt from Craig Challen: The Five Things I Learned from Craig Challen.

UWA Fogarty Scholarship Alumni, Dave Sherwood has been named in Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Social Entrepreneurs for 2019. The Forbes 30 Under 30 is a set of lists issued annually by Forbes magazine identifying the next generation of entrepreneurs, visionaries, and trailblazers.

Dave Sherwood completed a Bachelor of Science (Chemistry & Physics) as part of the UWA Fogarty Scholarship Program. During his time at UWA and inspired by his rural schooling experience at Bunbury Senior High School, Sherwood co-founded Teach Learn Grow, an initiative to enable rural and Indigenous students to reach their full potential.

As the 2013 Western Australian Rhodes Scholar, Sherwood relocated to Oxford University, during which time he co-founded Bibliotech, the ‘Spotify for textbooks’. 

Bibliotech is a webapp providing students and universities with affordable online access to all the textbooks they need, at any time, on any device, without being limited by individual personal budgets. The idea behind Bibliotech was conceived by Sherwood, who realised that there was a gap in the e-reading market, with students having to buy physical textbooks for extortionate prices. 

Over 30 major international universities like NYU and University of Oxford are now turning to the Bibliotech team to provide digital textbooks and eLearning software. Sherwood and fellow co-founder Daniel Engelke and Tao Mantaras have raised over $5.5 million in funding and work with publishers like Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Wiley.