Associate Professor Kate Trinajstic is a QEII Research Fellow at Curtin University working on reconstructing the lost soft anatomy of the earliest vertebrates through ultra-high resolution synchrotron scanning and also holds an honorary position at the Western Australian Museum in Perth. She has recently been awarded Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year, one of the prestigious Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science for her work investigating and interpreting soft tissues preserved in fossil fish. She obtained her PhD from the School of Earth and Environment UWA in 2000 and a Curtin Research Fellowship in 2009 to continue working on the fossils of Western Australia’s Kimberley region. A main research focus has been using new technologies such as micro-CT scanning to study the relationship between development and evolution, and the origin of major groups of animals. Research into the reproductive strategies of early vertebrates and the discovery of fossil embryos has had important implications for our understanding of the evolution of live-bearing in vertebrates and presented the earliest evidence of viviparity within jawed vertebrates. This work was internationally recognised with the discovery being awarded as one of the Top 10 Species Discoveries for 2009.