Dr. James McNamara is a National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow and Team Leader of Muscle Signalling at The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. His research has focused on molecular mechanisms of inherited cardiomyopathies in which he has made a number of seminal discoveries. He received his PhD in 2017 from the University of Sydney and subsequently undertook postdoctoral training at the University of Cincinnati, supported by the prestigious American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship. In 2020 he joined Prof. Enzo Porrello and A/Prof David Elliott’s groups at MCRI. Here, has risen to Team Leader, where he continues to study molecular mechanisms of genetic heart diseases, utilising both human pluripotent stem cells as a human model of disease. At 7-years post PhD, his research has attracted over $3 million in competitive funding and has been featured in leading journals such as Nature Cardiovascular Research, Science Translational Medicine, and Cell Metabolism. Recently, he has focused on the molecular function of the atypical kinase, ALPK3, in cardiac health and disease, which forms the basis of this award.