Congratulations Nicholas Blefari (ON 2008) and Ciaran Frame (ON 2012)  the 2019 ONU Centennial Trust recipients.

Here are their stories and why the are the worthy recipients of the 2019 ONU Centennial Trust.

Nicholas Blefari (ON 2008)

Dr. Nicholas Blefari graduated from Newington College in 2008, ranking 1st in German, German extension and 2-unit mathematics in year 12. He was accepted into Western Sydney University to study medicine, which he completed in 2013. During his junior doctor years, Nicholas worked at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, before moving to Newcastle for surgical training. He is currently training in general surgery at John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle, and hopes to specialise in endocrine surgery.

Throughout his medical training, Nicholas has been actively involved in teaching and surgical research, for which he has a keen passion. Nicholas is a clinical teaching fellow at the University of Newcastle School of Medicine and Public Health, where he is involved in the teaching and examination of medical students across varying stages of their training. Nicholas is a member of the Hunter Surgical Clinical Research Unit and the Hunter Medical Research Institute – dedicated research units which aims to foster and promote clinical research to doctors at all levels of their career. With his supervisor, Dr. Christine O’Neill, Nicholas has presented internationally and published work in the area of quality of life in survivors of thyroid cancer. Together, they are in the process of establishing a large multi-centre study to identify factors which impact on patients’ quality of life, with the hope for the future to be able to change practice to improve the patient experience.

As part of his dedication to research and further studies, Nicholas also completed a Masters of Surgery through the University of Sydney in 2018. He hopes one day to complete a PhD in the field of outcomes in the treatment and management of thyroid cancer.

Nicholas is also passionate about rural and remote medicine, and how to best deliver care to these areas. He has trained in a variety of rural towns across NSW such as Taree and Dubbo, and his wife is currently a GP in Walgett, NSW. Nicholas is looking forward to training in other rural towns across NSW as part of his surgical training.

Ciaran Frame (ON 2012)

Ciaran commenced at Newington in Kindergarten in 2000 and completed his International Baccalaurete at the College in 2012. Ciaran credits his education, co-curricular opportunities such as music ensembles and community service in giving him a well-rounded outlook towards his career and the confidence to pursue the arts and music at a young age. His time at Newington lead him to viewing his career through an educational and cultural management outlook.

Following Ciaran’s time at Newington, he completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Composition with First Class Honours at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2016 under the Board of Governor’s Scholarship. Much of Ciaran’s work following graduation has been in a professional musical practice, of which notable archievements include:
− Presentation at TENOR 2018 Fourth International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (Montreal, 2018)
− Ars Bioarctica artist residency in the Arctic Circle (Kilpisjärvi, Finland, 2017)
− 2016 – Treehugger installation in Vivid Light Walk 2016, commissioned by Destination NSW (Sydney 2016)

More recently Ciaran’s work has turned to capacity building and education in music. Last year, Ciaran returned to Wyvern House to undertake a pilot program of a new educational tool call the ‘Midge Synthesiser’. This is a small electronic instrument he designed to build young students’ interests in music technology and STEAM Learning. In addition, in September 2019, the Australian Music Centre released his first music education kit On The Verge, to be used in music classrooms across Australia. These accomplishments mark a notable shift in his career towards advocating for supporting the development of young people’s creative voices in music and the arts.

To further develop his career he has been accepted into the Master’s program in Arts and Cultural Management at the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Ciaran believes that the skills he gains from the Master’s program will provide the real-world foundations for navigating the arts community from a governance and management perspective. The ONU Centennial Trust will aid Ciaran in completing his Master’s and in turn he hopes to create new pathways in the arts on a local, national and international level that will have a direct impact on young people’s lives, much in the way that Newington impacted on him.

If you would like to be considered for the 2020 ONU Centennial Trust please visit the website here.  Applications for 2020 will be received from now till 30 June 2020.