They are among the brightest minds of our country and have devised some of the best research and projects all in the name of science.

On Wednesday night, 16 awards were presented for the 2016 Australian Museum Eureka Prize at Sydney Town Hall.

Here are five of the seriously cool things we noticed that came out of this year's Eureka Prize.

Artificial muscle



Professor Gordon Wallace from the University of Wollongong (pictured above) won the 2016 CSIRO Eureka Prize for Leadership in Innovation and Science, and it all started with a $2,000 grant back in 1985 to develop his vision of 'intelligent polymers'.

He took this idea, also known as 'smart plastics', and grew it into a $25-million preeminent centre of electromaterials science, the ARC Centre of Excellence in Electromaterials Science.

When his award was announced, Professor Wallace thanked the community for "supporting fundamental research that can be translated into discoveries that can have practical benefit for our daily lives."

What does it mean? In simple terms, the team develops materials which respond to their environment and can convert light or heat to electricity. The energy can be stored energy in batteries, as artificial muscles, and as anti-corrosion or anti-microbial surface coatings.

Professor Wallace, his team and international collaborators created conducting biocompatible composite structures that can be used to promote muscle and nerve cell growth and produced new types of artificial muscles based on carbon nanotubes.

They have also been involved in developing a 'bionic bra' and an 'Intelligent Knee Sleeve' used to prevent ACL ruptures in AFL athletes.

Check out more of their work here.

Sane in the membrane

Associate Professor Sharath Sriram is the winner of the 2016 3M Eureka Prize for Emerging Leader in Science.

In just over six years since graduating from his PhD, Associate Professor Sriram has built a research group of 25 staff with a budget of $8 million and is now deputy director of the $30-million Micro Nano Research Facility at RMIT University.

He and his team have developed the world's first artificial memory cell that mimics the way the brain stores long-term memory.

What does that mean? They have removed one of the greatest barriers in creating a bionic brain.

Meanwhile, Dr Michael Bowen from the University of Sydney has won the Macquarie University Eureka prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher for his discovery and development of novel treatments for serious brain disorders.

His research has established oxytocin, also known as the love hormone, inhibited alcohol consumption in the short- and long-term.

The team developed artificial memory cells which mimic the way the brain stores long-term memory. ( Flickr: Neil Conway )

Fireballs

Goodness gracious, great balls of fire. Quite literally.

An image of a meteor from the team on their Facebook page ( Facebook: Fireballs in the Sky )

ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Phil Bland and the Fireballs in the Sky team from Curtin University set up a network of 49 digital cameras in the Australian outback which capture fireball trajectories through the night sky.

The Desert Fireball Network (yes that's a thing — where can we join?) provides networked observations of fireballs — meteors travelling through space — allowing scientists to triangulate the meteor's trajectory, track the rock forward to where it lands and back to where it came from in the solar system.

The team won the inaugural Department of Industry, Innovation and Science Eureka Prize for Innovation in Citizen Science.

Fireballs in the Sky coordinator Renae Sayers said "It's our belief that research and public engagement are inseparable.

"That it is the duty of researchers in whatever field to bring the impact of research to the people that pay for it — Australian taxpayers."

Also worth noting is another study of historic rock by the University of Tasmania which could fundamentally change the way we view Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Professor Ross Large and his international team won the 2016 UNSW Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Research.

Armoured cars

Imagine the most tough army vehicle you can — the vehicle the likes of Chuck Norris and Sly Stallone would drive.

Then you have the Thales Hawkei mobility vehicle.

Named after the native Australian snake in the death adder species, Acanthophis hawkei, the locally manufactured vehicle is part of a new generation of armoured vehicles to keep Australia soldiers safe in war zones, aimed to protect against improvised explosive devices and small arms ambushes.

Thales Australia has won the 2016 Defence Science and Technology Eureka Prize for Outstanding Science in Safeguarding Australia.

Thales has won the Outstanding Science in Safeguarding Australia in the Eureka Prizes ( Facebook: Thales )

Discoveries on deadly diseases

Let's face it. Anything that helps the cause of fighting serious disease is always welcome, especially ones which impact millions of people per year.

Professor David Huang and his team from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research have won the new Johnson & Johnson Eureka Prize for Innovation in Medical Research for taking Australian research discoveries and developing them into a new cancer therapy, which was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in April this year.

The drug, venetoclax, was approved for a high-risk sub-group of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and is now being marketed in the United States.

Meanwhile, Professor Leann Tilley and her team from the University of Melbourne have won the 2016 Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre Eureka Prize for Infectious Disease Research.

They uncovered an important and lifesaving mechanism by which the malaria parasite has developed resistance to what has been a widely used and successful malarial treatment.

Anopheles stephensi, an Indian mosquito vector of malaria, the species used for research studies. ( Supplied: CSIRO )

There are plenty of other amazing discoveries, projects and scientists, so make sure you check out the full list of winners.