Chosen by the prestigious Editorial Advisory Board of COSMOS Magazine, the inaugural Cosmos Bright Sparks are Australia's top 10 scientific minds under the age of 45.

They are profiled in a special feature in the August/September issue of COSMOS Magazine (on sale 26 July), and will be celebrated at an awards night in August at the ABC Studios in Sydney.

This year's Bright Sparks are working to cure intractable diseases such as leukaemia and Alzheimer's, detect the earliest traces of life on Earth, reverse the effects of aging, plot the timeline of the universe and develop new optic fibre cables that outshine anything in the world today.

Science isn't just a career, it's a way of changing the world. And we are proud to celebrate the brilliance in Australian science with the inauguration of the 2006 Cosmos Bright Sparks.

"We hope to make this an annual feature, giving our brightest young minds the sort of star treatment that's more typically reserved for celebrities," said Wilson da Silva, Editor of COSMOS. "And why not? Scientists contribute more to society than film stars. And however amusing may be the latest antics of a jet-set heiress or a B-list model, their stories are hardly stuff of inspiration.

"Reading our Bright Sparks profiles, one cannot help but be impressed as well as inspired: there are a lot of smart people out there, pushing back the frontiers of knowledge and working for the benefit of humanity. And that's something worth celebrating," he added.

And the 2006 Cosmos Bright Sparks are:

Michelle Simmons – Physicist (Professor of Physics, University of New South Wales)

Howard Wiseman – Physicist (Federation Fellow, Griffith University)

David Sinclair – Medical Researcher (Associate Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School)

Abigail Allwood – Geologist (PhD candidate, Macquarie University)

Doug Hilton – Molecular Scientist (Head, Division of Molecular Medicine, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)

Vikram Khurana – Medical Researcher (Clinical Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston)

Tanya Monro – Optical Physicist (Professor of Physics, University of Adelaide)

Jonathan Carapetis – Epidemiologist (Director, Menzies School of Health, Charles Darwin University)

Stuart Wyithe – Astronomer (Lecturer, School of Physics, University of Melbourne)

Marco Ghisalberti – Environmental Engineer (Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Western Australia)

MORE ON THE 2006 COSMOS BRIGHT SPARKS:

Bright Spark at Menzies, republished from the Charles Darwin Univertsity newsletter

Bright Spark's Award Honour, republished from an article in Adelaide's The Advertiser

Wiseman Honoured by COSMOS Magazine, republished from the Griffith University News

Going With The Flow: Dr Marco Ghisalberti, republished the the online news site ScienceNetwork WA.

Celebrating Our Top Young Minds, republished transcript of a story broadcast on The Science Show, ABC Radio National.