Each week scientist Dr Tien Huynh spends hours in a greenhouse in Melbourne's north, tending the Asian plant known as "Red Gak."
Dr Huynh is researching its potential to help treat some forms of cancer.
"Carcinoma, melanoma and a few other breast cancers. We've had other students work on it - very effective, we're talking about 80-98 per cent killing of them but it leaves normal cells alive."
Tienh Huynh spent her early childhood in Vietnam under house arrest.
Her father, an officer in the South Vietnamese army, was exiled after the war and arrived in Australia in the early 1980s.
The rest of the family followed soon after.
Six year-old Tien, her mother and four year-old sister boarded a four-metre timber boat and made the trip from Vietnam to Indonesia.
They then took another voyage from Indonesia to Melbourne, where they reunited with Tien's father.
Dr Huynh says she is inspired by her mother's strength and tenacity.
"She wanted us to have a future and freedom and she just decided she was going to sacrifice everything. It was all-or-nothing to go on this journey to Australia and I think it's quite remarkable."
It engendered a can-do attitude and sense of optimism in young Tien Huynh, the only Asian female in her university science class.
"It was daunting but it was a challenge. It was exciting, like you were the first one there and the first one to make those changes with your perspective and I think that's what was a strength as well. I focus a lot of my research on Asian medicinal plants and to me I see that as an opportunity that I've got because of my background and difference in culture."
It was another high-achieving woman, scientist Adjunct Professor Ann Lawrie, who inspired the young Dr Huynh.
"She passed her knowledge to me so generously giving me that inspiration and the passion. If I can do that to my own students then I think it's a great homage to her."
Dr Tien Huynh is now mentoring Dao Nguyen, a masters graduate from a Vietnamese University.
The pair is collaborating on the "Red Gak" research project.
"She's a great lecturer and she has a big ambition how to inspire other women that they can do anything that they love to do."
It's landed Dr Huynh a coveted national "STEM" award for her work as a role model for young women in the field of science, which will be formally presented at a ceremony next month.
