Flinders University chemistry professor Colin Raston made headlines around the world for the development of his "vortex fluidic device", which unscrambles proteins.

While the machine has broad application in the biochemistry and pharmaceutical industries, the VFD had the unintended application of being able to unfold the proteins in egg whites back to their natural state.

The device can also be used to assist in the delivery of chemotherapy drugs, according to a report in the journal Scientific Reports, published in May by Nature. 

The machine dramatically improves the attachment of the platinum-based cancer drug carboplatin to nano-sized delivery tubes called vesicles.

Carboplatin works by binding to cancer cells, inhibiting their DNA synthesis and cell division. The authors of the paper expect that the use of nano-tubes for delivery will allow for a more targeted release of the chemotherapy drug. 

The Ig Nobel prizes are organised by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, with an editorial board consisting of 50 of eminent world scientists including several Nobel Prize winners and a convicted felon.

They are awarded annually at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On receiving the Ig Nobel for his research, Professor Raston said: "Wow, did I really do that?"

"It's living the dream. All scientists want to do something that is significant, but this has the wow factor," Professor Raston said.

"It's not what we set out to do, to unboil an egg, but it's the way of explaining the science involved and helping the wider world realise the momentousness of it."

Other winners at this years awards include:

Patricia Yang (Georgia Institute of Technology, US) for testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds;

Mark Dingemanse (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands), for discovering that the word "huh?" (or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language;

Elisabeth Oberzaucher and Karl Grammer (University of Vienna, Austria) for trying to use mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed, during the years from 1697 through 1727, to father 888 children; 

Bruno Grossi (University of Chile) and colleagues, for observing that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked.