Camilla Whittington has always been drawn to seahorses. Sure, the mysterious marine creatures are beautiful. But that's not what caught her imagination. Rather it's because these animals have male pregnancies. That's right: dad carries the babies for up to four weeks and gives birth soon after the contractions kick in.
"It's really, really unusual," Dr Whittington said. "Why would pregnancy evolve in a male?"
That set the evolutionary biologist on a path studying the genetic instructions that control pregnancy in seahorse dads. And this prompted the next question: were there any similarities in the mechanisms controlling pregnancy in other species?
The $25,000 L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women In Science fellowship Dr Whittington was awarded on Tuesday will help her answer just that.
Head of her own lab at Sydney University's school of life and environmental sciences, Dr Whittington, 32, will use her award to fund the next phase in her research: comparing the role of the placenta in rat, shark and lizard pregnancies.
The animals were chosen because they each give birth to live young and like humans have a complex placenta.
A critical organ in pregnancy, the placenta transports nutrients between the mother and the offspring; from energy-rich lipids to minerals such as calcium to build the skeleton.
"This is fundamental research," she said. "We are really working to understand the biology of the placenta. But what we learn is going to help us understand how a mum transports nutrients to a baby during pregnancy."
Dr Whittington said establishing the fundamentals behind what was happened when a pregnancy went to plan could make it easier to pinpoint what causes foetal malnutrition and disease, including in humans.
"Before we can fix something we need to understand what is going wrong," she said.
On Tuesday Dr Whittington was one of four early-career researchers to receive the coveted $25,000 fellowship.
Also recognised was Sydney University's Angela Crean for her work that showed males can adjust their sperm quality and quantity in response to perceived risk. She did this using a sea squirt as her study subject.
Jenny Fisher from the University of Wollongong received a fellowship for her research into the chemistry of our atmosphere - essentially learning about how different emissions interact with each other.
"When I was little I was intrigued by outer space and I know I wanted to work for NASA," Dr Fisher said. "As my career progressed I felt that understanding my own planet was more important to me so I made the change to researching the chemistry of our atmosphere."