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I am a medicinal chemist and postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia, where I obtained my BSc (Hons) with a major in organic chemistry in 2011. Following this, I worked at the Institute for Future Environments and later the Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities at QUT, where I gained experience in analytical chemistry, as well as molecular biology and genetics. In 2015, I returned to UQ to begin my PhD in the design and synthesis of novel antifungals targeting invasive infection under the supervision of Prof. Craig Williams and Prof. Luke Guddat, which I completed in 2019. Since this time I have worked at the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow under the supervision of Prof. Craig Williams, Prof. Avril Robertson, and now Prof. James De Voss. Broadly, my research interests lie in the pursuit of drug design and development campaigns addressing difficult or under-researched clinical concerns, and in particular, the use of novel bioisosteric approaches to improve drugability and drug efficacy.

More recently, I have developed an interest in Australian mushroom species. Very little recorded knowledge on our endemic mushrooms species exists. My research in this space seeks to characterise the genetic and molecular features of Australian wood rot mushrooms, which are critical players in maintaining and restoring the health of our unique forests ecosystems. With this information we aim to better understand our fungal biodiversity and the ecological roles they play, and to explore their potential as a platform for the identification of new drug molecules.

Dr. Agyeiwaah’s research focuses on promoting sustainable practices in tourism from both demand and supply perspectives. She specializes in sustainable tourism development, tourist studies, and small and medium tourism enterprises. Her passion lies in understanding how small and medium tourism enterprise owners and tourists can act responsibly to achieve sustainable tourism development. She uses pluralistic research approaches to investigate various sustainable behavioural phenomena, acknowledging the discipline’s complexity. Her research has been featured in prestigious interdisciplinary journals and top publications in tourism and hospitality.

Dr. Agyeiwaah is a certified hospitality educator (2015-2020) and has been teaching tourism and hospitality courses since 2012 in Africa, Asia, and now at UQ. She also has an excellent track record of supervising master’s and PhD theses. Additionally, she is dedicated to serving the communities around her through volunteering. During her leisure time, she likes to watch tennis.

Elizabeth-Rose Ahearn is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Queensland (UQ). Her research centres on measuring and evaluating the impact of charitable not-for-profit organisations, as well as other purpose-driven entities, including those in the public sector, social enterprises, corporate social responsibility efforts, and social impact bonds. She has a particular interest in leveraging digital technologies to enhance impact measurement, improve management processes, and support evidence-based decision-making. Elizabeth-Rose has extensive experience as an evaluator, having collaborated with a diverse range of for-purpose organisations, including a research secondment with the Department of Social Services focused on digital tools for advancing Australia's social impact investing sector. Alongside her role at UQ, she serves as the Co-Chair of the Queensland chapter of the Social Impact Measurement Network of Australia (SIMNA).

Ben is a specialist in equine surgery and is board certified by the American College of Equine Surgeons (www.acvs.org) and the American College of Veterinary Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation (www.vsmr.org) he is one of only a handful of veterinarians in Australia with these dual qualifications. He has authored multiple book chapters and has published on a wide range of topics ranging from orthopaedics and lameness, to novel tie-back procedures and stem cell therapies. Ben has a Phd related to laryngeal surgery in horses.

With over 15 years in international sustainable urban development, Dr. Mubeen Ahmad specialises in advancing research-driven urban policy and planning strategies and has delivered over 25 key transformative urban development projects across the Asia-Pacific, South Asian, and the American cities. He has proven experience in operationalising vision with action—streamlining processes, forging partnerships, and ensuring that every project resonates with long-term resilience and inclusivity. He has led multi-disciplinary teams and successfully partnered with governments, multilateral organisations such as the ADB, UNDP, and DFAT, and private stakeholders in delivering urban and transport planning solutions that balance cutting-edge efficiency with community-centric outcomes.

His academic role further accentuates his contributions, as he teaches and coordinates undergraduate and postgraduate courses focused towards application of innovative solutions to urban planning, design, and transport challenges.

Dr. Shabbir Ahmad is an applied econometrician and economist specializing in productivity, financial analysis, and environmental sustainability. His research encompasses impact evaluation across various economic and financial dimensions, developing econometric methods to measure and decompose sectoral productivity into its core drivers. Dr. Ahmad's recent work has centered on productivity and sustainability challenges within the agriculture and resource sectors, focusing on achieving net zero emissions.

His collaborations span industry, international organizations, and academic institutions, addressing economic development issues across multiple continents. Dr. Ahmad’s expertise lies in data analytics, economic modeling, and policy analysis, with proficiency in handling and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, including large administrative datasets.

Dr. Ahmad's work significantly contributes to international development research, addressing key challenges in economic growth, resource management, and policy interventions in developed and developing nations. His research blends robust theoretical foundations with practical solutions, influencing academic discourse and global policy decisions. Throughout his career, he has secured numerous international grants and applied innovative methods to combat rural poverty and promote economic development, especially in Asia and Africa.

He holds a PhD in Applied Econometrics from the UQ School of Economics (2014) and a PhD in Financial Economics from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan (2011).

Dr Emtiaz specializes in the development of nanotechnology-driven novel liquid biopsy platforms for the early-stage diagnosis of cancer and infectious diseases.

Dr Emtiaz Ahmed is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering & Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia. Prior to this role, he worked as a Research Officer at the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) for over five years, focusing on Infectious Disease Research. His work in icddr,b (https://www.icddrb.org/) cantered on studying various gastroenteric pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, and parasites. This involved investigating their incidence and role in gastroenteric diseases, identifying genotypes for vaccine development, studying host factors affecting infection susceptibility, and developing point-of-care diagnostic platforms. Dr Ahmed's exceptional achievements at icddr,b earned him the prestigious 'University of Queensland Research Training Program (UQ-RTP) Scholarship (2019-2023)' for his PhD studies at UQ, Australia. Dr Ahmed earned his doctoral degree in 2023 in Biomedical Engineering from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering & Nanotechnology (AIBN), the University of Queensland, receiving the Dean's award for an outstanding PhD thesis. He is a highly skilled biomedical researcher with a strong focus on the development of nanotechnology-based point-of-care technologies for early-stage cancer diagnosis and treatment monitoring. Dr Ahmed's skills not only benefit cancer and infectious disease diagnosis but also serve as valuable assets for clinicians in monitoring disease prognosis and selecting the most suitable treatments for individual patients, thereby improving treatment outcomes through precision medicine. Early in his scientific career, he has published 13 research articles in highly reputed international journals and garnered over 315 citations (with an h-index of 7), establishing a reputation for significant contributions to the fields of nanotechnologically engineered cancer diagnosis, treatment monitoring, infectious disease diagnosis, vaccine development, and public health research as on October 2024.

Dr Emtiaz has presented his developed biosensors for cancer diagnosis at two prestigious international conferences in South Korea—the Biosensor Conference 2021 and the World Congress on Biosensors 2023—showcasing excellence in Australian biomedical research. He has also presented his findings at two national conferences in Sydney, Australia: the Thomas Ashworth CTC & Liquid Biopsy Symposium 2021 and the Australian Society for Medical Research (ASMR) annual conference, engaging a diverse audience of global health researchers and policymakers. Additionally, Dr Emtiaz has served as a Casual Academic in the Department of Mechanical and Mining Engineering at the University of Queensland for three consecutive years, preparing Australia’s next generation of engineers. Over this period, he taught three cohorts of master’s students (each cohort comprising approximately 60 students), covering topics in nanotechnology and biomedical engineering. He also provided hands-on training in developing various miniaturized devices for a range of applications.

I am a media studies scholar studying current smart technologies and consequent ontological conundrums we face as these machines become smarter than us at telling how things are within ourselves and around our worlds. My previous research on the Internet of Things (IoT) was about these hidden arrangements of things in our background that machines constantly remind us of as those we should always be a little paranoid of, and how this normalized paranoia leads us to accept the IoT as a new smarter technique of self-governance. My first book Internet-ontologies-Things: Smart Objects, Hidden Problems, and their Symmetries (2023) argues these popular narratives of smart lives as our strategic and speculative responses to such common feelings: "Something is there, so embedded in our bodies, homes, and neighbourhoods. We feel it but cannot grasp it!"

Digital ontology is the term that best describes the nature of my research but it's less relevant to a pure philosophical inquiry about how things are in the world. Ontology in my practical and critical concern is rather related to the new capitalist ideology (or realism) that runs media industries’ current speculative economy. So, my critical reading of the ontological turn in humanities and social sciences focuses on its strategic dimension. How does this turn draw our attention to the things that our too-human perception always fails to pay the right attention to? How does this in turn mobilize our constant speculation about things beyond our perceptions and control, not only as the inexhaustible source of our anxieties but also as the inexhaustible resource of cultural production?

My current research interests include Digital Ontology, New Materialism, Speculative (Capitalist) Realism, Quantum Physics as Cultural Imagination, Science and Technology Studies, Actor-Network Theory, French Philosophers (e.g. Foucault, Deleuze, and Badiou), Eco- and Geo-philosophy/criticism, new materialist film and videogame studies.

SangHyung Ahn is Lecturer in the School of Civil Engineering. SangHyung Ahn joined UQ in 2015 as postdoctoral research fellow and started working as Lecturer in 2017 after pursuing his PhD research in Civil Engineering (Construction Engineering and Management) at Purdue University in USA. Prior to joining Purdue, he worked as an assistant manager at Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co., Ltd. (ranked as world’s top 15 international contractor in Engineering News-Record 2015) from 2003 to 2007. He also holds his MBA (international business) from Hanyang University in South Korea and his B.Sc (Civil Engineering) from Korea University in South Korea.

Dr. Ahn’s research focus encompasses construction process modelling with virtual reality, decision support systems for construction, automation of data-driven simulation modelling, sensor-based operations analysis, and construction management systems with Building Information Modelling (BIM). He is currently coordinating and delivering undergraduate courses, Introduction to Project Management (CIVL3510) and Construction Engineering Management (CIVL4522) offered in the School of Civil Engineering at UQ.

Dr Nagham Ailabouni is a clinician-researcher and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow (EL1) at the University of Queensland, Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences.

They identify as a person from a culturally and linguistically diverse background (CALD) and is of Palestinian Jordanian descent. Dr Ailabouni's main research interests include implementation science, co-design and consumer engagement in person-centred deprescribing, quality use of medicines in older people, people living with dementia and their carers.

They completed their undergraduate Pharmacy degree at the University of Otago and is an Australian registered pharmacist with clinical pharmacy experience in various healthcare settings including hospital, aged care and community pharmacy. Thereafter, Dr Ailabouni conferred their PhD titled "Deprescribing in Older New Zealanders" from the University of Otago, Dunedin in 2018. Their PhD program was the first to explore deprescribing in New Zealand.

Dr Ailabouni is the Public Engagement Subcommittee Chair of the leading deprescribing network in Australia, the Australian Deprescribing Network and the co-chair of the American Geriatrics Society Polypharmacy and Deprescribing Special Interest Group. They are the Early Career Representative of the School of Pharmacy representing early career researchers within their institution since 2022.

Professionally, Dr Ailabouni was competitively selected as an observer for the Australian Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, Medication Safety Oversight Committee, since 2023. They were elected and served as the President of the Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand (PSNZ) Otago Branch in 2014-2016. They were elected once again and served as the President of the PSNZ South Canterbury Branch in 2016-2018.

Dr Ailabouni enjoys being part of early career researchers' professional development and growth. They are currently supervising and mentoring 6 PhD candidates in Australia and New Zealand and looks forward to growing their supervision roles.

As a teaching-focused academic, Louise Ainscough is passionate about education research, and how it can be applied to encourage the development of her students as learners, citizens and healthcare professionals. She teaches physiology and histology to a range of healthcare professional students, including occupational therapy, pharmacy, dentistry, physiotherapy, speech pathology, health science and medicine. Louise draws on her expertise in the scholarship of teaching and learning to develop curricula and assessment that is both evidence-based and rigorously evaluated. She has received funding through both UQ New Staff and Early Career research grants for projects in self-regulated learning and the related field of self-efficacy. She is also actively involved in supervising undergraduate research and Honours students, including mentoring these students in educational research methodologies and academic writing. Louise takes immense pleasure in guiding students in their development as learners, both on an individual basis and in large undergraduate classes. Louise is renowned for making learning fun. She takes the fear out of learning science, and encourages students to find their own voice as learners and future healthcare professionals.