Three Australian academics — one who "unboiled" an egg, the other whose research uncovered the presence of the word "huh" in 31 languages — have been recognised in the Ig Nobel Prizes.
The award is a prestigious parody of the world's foremost scientific honour.
The Ig Nobels are awarded annually at Harvard University in honour of scientific achievements that "make people laugh, then make them think".
Professors Colin Raston from Flinders University in Adelaide took out the prize for creating the vortex fluidic device, which can unravel proteins or "unboil" an egg.
Another Australian, Callum Ormonde from the University of Western Australia, was one of the co-authors of Professor Raston's study, which was undertaken by an Australian/ US team.
The device — which the academic said stemmed from "a chance, 10-minute conversation" in 2012 — was first tested on a hen egg. Researchers managed to pull apart its tangled proteins and return the egg white to an earlier state.
"When you boil an egg, the egg white goes white because there's a protein in there," he said.
"It's like a bit of spaghetti coiled up, but if it's not coiled up properly, it'll start to stick to all these other ... proteins, so it forms a gel.
"So if you can actually get some form of energy back in to refold the bit of spaghetti so it's actually in the correct state, then you've unboiled an egg."
Professor Raston said the device allowed more tightly controlled chemical processes to be performed, saving researchers time and reducing their materials wastage.
One application already found allows improved delivery of a common cancer treatment drug, carboplatin, which is used against ovarian and lung cancers.
The device has allowed drug potency to be boosted as much as four-and-a-half times, Professor Raston said.
Professor Raston said he was humbled to travel to Harvard University to collect the award.
"It's nice to be recognised, though I have to say that a lot of people were involved in this particular discovery about unboiling an egg," Professor Raston said.
"It's not what we started out to do, but we developed technology that can do it. It's big-picture stuff."