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BIO:

Noun (n): I am a Professor in polymer processing in Chemical Engineering, a chief investigator in Advanced Materials Processing and Manufacturing (AMPAM) centre, a chief investigator/director of external links of the ARC industrial transformation training centre (ITTC) in bioplastics and biocomposites, a chief investigator in food and beverage accellerator (FaBA).and a chief investigator in the solving plastic waste cooperative research centre (spwCRC).

Verb (v): I work at the translational research interface between universities and industry. Specifically my research involves rheology, processing and product design of bio-based materials, polymers and nanocomposite materials. I lead translational research projects in biopolymers and biofluid platforms for agrifood, biomedical and high-value manufacturing sectors which attract government and industry funding; and produce patents, licences. industrial know-how as well as fundamental papers.

History (h): I have worked in industry (SRI international, Sola Optical, Moldflow), have worked in five cooperative research centres (CRCs -Food Packaging, Sugar Innovation, Polymers, Fighting Food Waste, Solving Plastic Waste), have acquired and managed continuous government and industry research projects since 1994, was heavily involved in the spinoff of Plantic Technologies from the CRC food packaging in 2002 (and ongoing research support with them until 2016), and was involved in the research that led to the TenasiTech (TPU nanocomposite) spinoff from UQ in 2007.I am a fellow of the institute of chemical engineers (IChemE) and a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI). I am on the editorial board of the Plastics, Rubbers and Composites, Starch, the Journal of Renewable Materials, Green Materials and Functional Composite Materials-Springer-Nature. I have experience on the boards of the UQ Dow Centre, the UQ RTA Centre, and the UQ-HBIS Sustainable Steel Innovation Centre. I won IChemE Shedden Uhde Award and Prize for excellence in Chemical Engineering (2004), the CRC Sugar innovation award (2008), the CRCPolymers Chairman’s award for research and commercialisation (2011), and have received the CRC Association Technology Transfer Award, twice, in 2002 and 2015.

Research:

Current projects are focused on developing new sustainable and bio-based polymers and biochemicals from formulation through to degradation/disposal, understanding processing of nanostructured polymers, developing smarter biopolymers and materials for biomedical, drug delivery, food and high value applications, understanding rheology and processing of a range of polymer, foods and liquids and is involved in new initiatives in circular plastics.

Teaching and Learning:

My teaching has spanned Introduction to Engineering Design, Engineering Thermodynamics, Polymer Engineering, Process Economics, Research Thesis and Engineering Management. I am developing new courses in Sustainability and the Circular Economy. My overall teaching goal is to be a relevant, well organised, enthusiastic and empathetic enabler of learning using multiple teaching and learning modes, and be highly connected to current industrial practices and cutting edge research.

International links

I have been a visiting or invited professor at ENSICAEN-University, Caen, Normandy, University of Nottingham, Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Strasbourg and Institut national des sciences appliquées (INSA) de Lyon in France. I have strong international collaborations with the US Department of Agriculture, Albany, USA; Colorado School of Mines, USA; AnoxKaldnes, Sweden; University of Bradford, University of Warwick, University of Nottingham, University of Sheffield, UK, SCION, NZ; Michigan State University, USA, and many Australian universities.

Dr Pingping Han is currently leading the Epigenetic Nanodiagnostics and Therapeutics Group within the Centre for Orofacial Regeneration, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation (COR3), at the UQ School of Dentistry. Dr Han received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2014. Dr Han's current research focuses on three themes: a) salivary diagnostics for periodontal disease, b) “cell-free” regenerative therapy for periodontal tissue engineering and c) cellular nano-mechanics on different modified biomaterial substrates.

MBChB FRCA FANZCA FFICM PhD

Dr Nyoman Kurniawan is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advanced Imaging and the Facility Manager for Preclincal 16.4T Microimaging 9.4T MRI scanners.

Dr Kurniawan’s research areas are:

• Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging of mouse neuroanatomy, with view to study neurological disease model, including:
  • developmental abnormalities
  • spinal cord diseases
• Development of 3D mouse brain, human spinal cord and cephalopod brain atlases using high resolution structural and diffusion MRI
• Development of MR methods for nephron imaging
• Application of MRI for agriculture imaging

Dr. Liu specialises in extracellular vesicles, osteosarcoma, breast cancer, tissue engineering, immunomodulation and biomaterial functionalisation.

Dr. Liu is a clinician (surgeon)-scientist with clinical and preclinical expertise in tissue repair and immunomodulation. Dr. Liu obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Shanghai JiaoTong University (China); and a PhD degree from RWTH Aachen University (Germany).

Dr. Liu works with extracellular vesicles, including newly discovered matrix-bound nanovesicles. Dr. Liu’s current projects involve assessing the role of extracellular vesicle glycans on immunomodulation in metastatic breast cancer and metastatic pediatric cancers, such as osteosarcoma. Dr. Liu also has a background in biological scaffold functionalisation with the goal of developing innovative approaches that bring advanced benefits directly to clinical soft tissue repair.

Dr Mostafa Kamal Masud is a CCQ Next Generation Cancer Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering & Nanotechnology (AIBN), the University of Queensland (UQ). In 2020, he received his PhD in Medical Biotechnology Diagnostics and Nanobiotechnology from AIBN, UQ. He received his MS and B.Sc. (Hons.) in Chemistry from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh. After completing his PhD, he was awarded a prestigious JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship (success rate >10%) from Japan and served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Japan's National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS).He recently been awarded a highly prestigious ARC DECRA fellowship for the period 2024-2026 and a QLD Cancer Council fellowship for the period 2024–2028. His research focuses on the development of novel nanostructures and nanodiagnostic technologies to address critical issues in medical diagnosis. As an early career researcher, he has an excellent track record with more than 60 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious and high-impact journals in the area that achieve <2800 citations with an h-index of 29 (Scholar google link: https://bit.ly/2Vtv67l). He has developed new classes of superparamagnetic nanostructures and fabricated novel biosensors for the detection of disease-specific biomolecular targets e.g., for miRNA, DNA, exosome and protein biomarker detection that have proven to be easy and effective, allowing for rapid diagnosis with minimal equipment. He made a major contribution to nanotechnology integrated-analytical and diagnostic fields by providing analytical and technological input as well as developing key collaborations with clinicians and biologists for translational research. His strategy is to create nano-architecture point-of-care diagnostic technology for early diagnosis of cancer that could hopefully lead to a healthy and happier life for humans.

Dr. Alejandro Melendez-Calderon has an interdisciplinary background in robotics and biomedical engineering with extensive experience in human augmentation technologies used in medicine (robotics, wearable devices) and computational approaches to understand human neuromuscular control (unimpaired, stroke and SCI population). He has over 19 years of experience gained in academic, clinical and industrial environments.

He leads the NeuroEngineering, Rehabilitation and Medical Robotics Lab at UQ, and is currently a Senior Lecturer within the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering and the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (affiliate) at the University of Queensland (Australia; Jan 2020-present). He is also a Principal Research Fellow at the Jamieson Trauma Institute, Queensland Health (Australia, Jun 2022-present) where he leads the Rehabilitaiton and Outcomes theme.

Work experience | Clinical - He was previously a Senior Research Scientist and acting Head of Technology at the cereneo Advanced Rehabilitation Institute / cereneo Center for Neurology and Rehabilitation (Switzerland; 2017-2019), where he led and conducted research in the area of neuromechanics of movement deficits after stroke. He was also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Northwestern University (USA; 2014-2020) and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (formerly Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago) (2012-2013), where he conducted research in cross-modal multisensory interactions and assessment of neuromuscular impairments. Medical industry - He led the areas of Robotic Hand Rehabilitation and Assessments, and work on adaptive control of robotic trainers (arm and legs) at Hocoma AG (Switzerland; 2014-2016), one of the world-leading manufacturers of robotic and wearable technologies for rehabilitation. Academic research - He was a Guest Researcher at ETH Zurich (Switzerland; 2016-2019), where he conducted research in biomechanics and motor control/learning. He received his PhD degree from Imperial College London (UK; 2007-2011) for research in robotics, rehabilitation and human motor control.

Interests | Dr. Melendez-Calderon has a scientific interest in understanding principled mechanisms of human behavior, in particular related to movement control/learning and physical interaction; his technical interests are in robotics and computational modeling for medical diagnostics, assistive applications & (bio)medical education.

Professor Mobli is a structural biologist and a group leader at the University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN). He is well known internationally for his contributions to the basic theory of multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance and its applications to resolving the molecular structure of peptides and proteins, as well as studying their physiochemical properties and function. Mehdi's contributions to the field has been recognised by being appointed an Executive Editor of the AMPERE society's journal "Magnetic Resonance", and to the advisory board of the international Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB) as well as serving on the board of directors of the Australia and New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance (ANZMAG). He is a former ARC Future Fellow and recipient of the ASBMB MERCK medal, the Australia Peptide Society's Tregear Award, the ANZMAG Sir Paul Callaghan medal and the Lorne Proteins Young Investigator Award (now Robin Anders Award).

Prof. Mobli's research group focuses on characterising the structure and function of receptors involved in neuronal signalling, with a particular focus on developing new approaches for the discovery and characterisation of modulators of these receptors through innovations in bioinformatics, biochemistry and and biophysics. This work has led to publication of more than 100 research articles attracting over 6,000 citations.

Dr Moni holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence & Data Science in 2014 from the University of Cambridge, UK followed by postdoctoral training at the University of New South Wales, University of Sydney Vice-chancellor fellowship, and Senior Data Scientist at the University of Oxford. Dr Moni then joined UQ in 2021. He also worked as an assistant professor and lecturer in two universities (PUST and JKKNIU) from 2007 to 2011. He is an Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision & Machine learning, Digital Health Data Science, Health Informatics and Bioinformatics researcher developing interpretable and clinical applicable machine learning and deep learning models to increase the performance and transparency of AI-based automated decision-making systems.

His research interests include quantifying and extracting actionable knowledge from data to solve real-world problems and giving humans explainable AI models through feature visualisation and attribution methods. He has applied these techniques to various multi-disciplinary applications such as medical imaging including stroke MRI/fMRI imaging, real-time cancer imaging. He led and managed significant research programs in developing machine-learning, deep-learning and translational data science models, and software tools to aid the diagnosis and prediction of disease outcomes, particularly for hard-to-manage complex and chronic diseases. His research interest also includes developing Data Science, machine learning and deep learning algorithms, models and software tools utilising different types of data, especially medical images, neuroimaging (MRI, fMRI, Ultrasound, X-Ray), EEG, ECG, Bioinformatics, and secondary usage of routinely collected data.

• I am currently recruiting graduate students. Check out Available Projects for details. Open to both Domestic and International students.

Dr Moyle’s laboratory (www.moylelab.com) uses cutting edge technologies for the synthesis of peptides, protein expression, and protein semi-synthesis to gain insights into the functional roles played by various biochemical pathways, to engineer better protein and peptide therapeutics, and to improve the delivery characteristics of various therapeutic molecules. Specific current areas of interest are detailed below:

1. Subunit Vaccine Development: methods to develop improved vaccines through the combination of recombinant and synthetic approaches to improve immunopotency and tailor immune responses (links to reseach articles on semisynthetic vaccines and peptide vaccines; reviews on vaccine development).
2. Delivery Systems for Nucleic Acid-Based Molecules: multi-component synthetic and recombinant approaches to improve the cellular uptake, and targeted delivery of various oligonucleotide molecules (e.g. siRNA, mRNA, pDNA and CRISPR-Cas9) as an exciting approach to treat or prevent various diseases (links to research articles and reviews).
3. Deciphering the Roles of Post-Translational Modifications: The combination of peptide synthesis and protein semisynthesis to enable the production of large amounts of site-specifically modified species, that can be used to deconvolute the roles played by various post-translational modifications (links to research articles).
4. Peptide/Protein Drugs and Delivery: The study of methods to improve the delivery characteristics of peptide/protein drugs (e.g. poor oral absorption, instability to chemical/enzymatic degradation, and the inability to reach their site/s of action) through chemical engineering approaches.
5. New Approaches for Superbugs: the development of antivirulence approaches, and formulations (e.g. various types of nanoparticles - silver, protein, mesoporous silica), which reduce the ability for microbes to cause disease, and make them more readily treated with antimicrobials, by providing access to synergistic combinations, and reducing the risk of antimicrobial resistance.

Information for Potential Students:

The Moyle lab considers applications from potential students and postdoctoral fellows with an interest in: i) infection control (including subunit vaccine and antimicrobial development); ii) delivery systems for peptide therapeutics; iii) targeted delivery systems; iv) studying the function of posttranslational modifications; and v) delivery systems for nucleic acid-based therapeutics (e.g. siRNA, shRNA, miRNA, mRNA, pDNA and CRISPR-Cas9). If you are interested in working in any of these areas please feel free to contact Dr Moyle (p.moyle@uq.edu.au). Please ensure that you supply an up to date CV; describe why you would like to work in the Moyle lab; provide a listing of publications (preferably with impact factors and citation counts); and indicate what skills you would bring to the lab. Detailed information on our laboratory is available at www.moylelab.com. Preference will be given to students and postdoctoral fellows who have their own funding.

Dr Moyle Biosketch:

Dr Moyle (H-index 30, >2600 citations; >95 publications; 13/8/2024; Google Scholar, ORCID, ResearcherID, and Publons profiles) received a PhD (Dec 2006) and a Bachelor of Pharmacy (Hons I) (Dec 2001) from The University of Queensland (UQ); graduated from the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia pre-registration pharmacist-training course (Nov 2002); and is registered with the Pharmacy Board of Australia. He currently works as an Associate Professor in the UQ School of Pharmacy, where he has been based since 2014.

Dr Moyle works in the fields of medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, and drug formulation, investigating subunit vaccine development, outcomes associated with histone post-translational modifications, and methods to improve the delivery characteristics of oligonucleotide (e.g. siRNA and pDNA), peptide, and protein therapeutics. During his PhD, Dr Moyle developed methods that enabled the synthesis of pure, lipid adjuvanted peptide vaccines, using advanced chemical ligation techniques. In addition, the conjugation of mannose to combined prophylactic/therapeutic human papillomavirus type-16 vaccines, to target dendritic cells, was demonstrated to significantly improve vaccine anti-tumour activity. This work, conducted with leading researchers at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute (Prof Michael Good & Dr Colleen Olive), established Dr Moyle’s national and international profile in the field of vaccine development, resulting in 11 peer reviewed papers, including top journals in the field (J Med Chem; J Org Chem), as well as 6 review articles and 2 invited book chapters.

Dr Moyle undertook his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of one of the world’s premier chemical biologists, Professor Tom Muir (the Rockefeller University, NY, USA; now at Princeton University, NJ, USA). During this time he developed an extensive knowledge of techniques for protein expression, bioconjugation, bioassays, and proteomics, which represent an essential skill set required for this proposal. As part of this work, Dr Moyle developed novel synthetic routes to generate site-specific ADP-ribose conjugated peptides and proteins. This research was hailed as a major breakthrough in the field, leading to several collaborations, and an exemplary publication in the prestigious chemistry journal JACS. This vast body of work identified the enzyme (PARP10) responsible for mono-ADP-ribosylation of histone H2B, and demonstrated interactions between this modification and several proteins, including BAL, which is associated with B cell lymphomas. In addition, a number of robust chemical methods were developed to enable the synthesis of a complete library of methyl-arginine containing histones, which were incorporated into synthetic chemically-defined chromatin to investigate the site-specific effects of arginine methylation on histone acetylation. This work led to a collaboration with colleagues at Rockefeller to investigate the effects of histone arginine methylation on transcription.

Teaching:

Dr Moyle teaches into the following subjects in the UQ School of Pharmacy.

• PHRM3011 (Quality Use of Medicines) - course coordinator
• PHRM4021 (Integrated Pharmaceutical Development)
• PHRM3021 (Dosage Form Design)
• PHRM2040 (Drug Discovery)

Awards:

2016 - Health and Behavioural Sciences (HABS) faculty commendation for Early Career Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (ECCOSL)

2015 - ChemMedChem top 10 cited article of 2013 (link)

2014 - Highest ranked NHMRC development grant (2013; APP1074899)

2013 - Institute for Molecular Biology (IMB) Division of Chemistry and Structural Biology Prize

I completed a PhD in Neuroscience with Jack Pettigrew (FRS) at Vision, Touch & Hearing Research Centre followed by an NHMRC Clinical Research Fellowship at Alfred Health & Monash University.

Back in QLD I'm continuing a transdisciplinary research & innovation program to Bring Discoveries of the Brain to Life!

I'm currently focused on developing novel MedTech Biotech diagnostics & therapeutics for enhancing human performance, recovery & resilience with the following projects:

[1] Precision Pain Medicine — the largest genetic study of persistent (chronic) pain in Australia, in collaboration with QIMR Berghofer & Monash University, aims to identify pharmacogenomics causal pathways for the design of personalised therapeutics & effective early intervention approaches (e.g., screening, education, prevention).

[2] Brain Switcha — A digital transdiagnostic biomarker and cloud-based large-scale population phenotyping & analytics platform to improve early intervention strategies in sleep & mental health conditions (esp. at-risk youth cohorts) and recruitment screening for Defence forces.

[3] VCS — vestibulocortical stimulation: A simple, inexpensive, non-invasive & non-pharmacologic neurotherapeutic treatment technique for fibromyalgia (with US colleagues) and other centralised pain syndromes, sleep apnoea, dementia & mental health conditions (e.g., depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder).

I also have >5 years professional services experience providing specialist research performance evaluation, consultation, reporting & training workshops that successfully delivered several major strategic priorities to a large internal & external client base — such as organisational unit leaders/managers at multiple levels (e.g., Centre/Department) and senior executive business missions for national/international strategic partnerships. This work includes mapping, monitoring & benchmarking of research capacity, capabilities/strengths, gaps & collaboration networks (e.g., clinical, corporate & government) across diverse disciplines for Annual & Septennial Departmental Reviews (e.g., patent, policy & clinical guideline citations; external stakeholder engagement including media); ARC Engagement & Impact assessments; and workforce capability development (e.g., recruitment for senior leadership positions and ranking of NHMRC/ARC funding applicants).

In particular, I enjoy meeting & connecting people with a shared vision & commitment towards building innovative & sustainable public-private partnerships to deliver meaningful solutions for the wider community.

Dr Quan Nguyen is a Group Leader at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), The University of Queensland. He is leading the Genomics and Machine Learning (GML) lab to study neuroinflammation and cancer-immune cells at single-cell resolution and within spatial morphological tissue context. His research interest is about revealing gene and cell regulators that determine the states of the complex cancer and neuronal ecosystems. Particularly, he is interested in quantifying cellular diversity and the dynamics of cell-cell interactions within the tissues to find ways to improve cancer diagnosis or cell-type specific treatments or the immunoinflammation responses that cause neuronal disease.

Using machine learning and genomic approaches, his group are integrating single-cell spatiotemporal sequencing data with tissue imaging data to find causal links between cellular genotypes, tissue microenvironment, and disease phenotypes. GML lab is also developing experimental technologies that enable large-scale profiling of spatial gene and protein expression (spatial omics) in a range of cancer tissues (focusing on brain and skin cancer) and in mouse brain and spinal cord.

Dr Quan Nguyen completed a PhD in Bioengineering at the University of Queensland in 2013, postdoctoral training in Bioinformatics at RIKEN institute in Japan in 2015, a CSIRO Office of Chief Executive (OCE) Research Fellowship in 2016, an IMB Fellow in 2018, an Australian Research Council DECRA fellowship (2019-2021), and is currently a National Health and Medical Research Council leadership fellow (EL2). He has published in top-tier journals, including Cell, Cell Stem Cell, Nature Methods, Nature Protocols, Nature Communications, Genome Research, Genome Biology and a prize-winning paper in GigaScience. In the past three years, he has contributed to the development of x8 open-source software, x2 web applications, and x4 databases for analysis of single-cell data and spatial transcriptomics. He is looking for enthusiastic research students and research staff to join his group.

Dr Antonio Padilha L. Bo completed the BEng and MSc at the University of Brasília, Brazil, in 2004 and 2007, respectively, and he was awarded the PhD from the University of Montpellier, France, in 2011. From 2011 to 2019, he has been a tenured assistant professor in electrical engineering at the University of Brasilia, Brazil, where he coordinated Project EMA (Empowering Mobility and Autonomy), which is one of the teams that took part in the Cybathlon competition in 2016 and 2020. He has co-authored over 75 peer-reviewed publications, including awards from societies such as IFAC, IFESS, and MICCAI.

Over the past ten years, Dr Bo has been engaged in research projects concerning the development of technology dedicated to healthcare, particularly in the design of systems to be directly used by a patient in rehabilitation or assistive settings. Every effort featured strong experimental work and was conducted in close collaboration with local rehabilitation centers. In his work, tools from neuroengineering, robotics, control, virtual reality, and instrumentation are often integrated to create devices and algorithms to sense and control human motion. For instance, he has used wearable sensors to segment and estimate parameters of human movement in real-time, a technique that may lead to novel rehabilitation protocols. More importantly, his work has also focused on developing closed-loop control strategies for electrical stimulation applications and prosthetic/orthotic devices. Some examples include systems based on superficial electrical stimulation to enable persons with spinal cord injury to exercise using the lower limbs (e.g. in cycling or rowing) and to attenuate the effects of pathological tremor in essential tremor and Parkinson's Disease.

His long-term research goal is to develop and evaluate the use of noninvasive technology, including electrical stimulation, robotics, virtual reality, and wearable devices, for improving rehabilitation and assistance for persons with motor disabilities.

Career Summary: 2009: PhD, University of Michigan, USA with training in cardiac physiology, modelling myocardial ischemia in vivo and in vitro, and development of therapeutic approaches for myocardial ischemia; 2009–2015: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Washington, Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, USA with training in stem cell biology, genomics, genome editing, and cell therapeutics for ischemic heart disease; 2015–current: Group Leader, University of Queensland (UQ), Institute for Molecular Bioscience; 2022-current: Associate Professor, UQ; 2018–2021 and 2023-2026: National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow. Dr. Palpant’s research team has expertise in human stem cell biology, computational genomics, and cardiac physiology, which enables them to translate outcomes from cell biology and genomics to disease modelling, drug discovery, and preclinical modelling.

Dr. Ove A. Peters joined the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, in 2020 after faculty positions in Heidelberg, Germany and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as at the University of California, San Francisco. Most recently, he was the founding director of the postgraduate endodontic program at the Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry in San Francisco, a professor with tenure and the Chair of the Department of Endodontics at that school.

Dr. Peters has wide-ranging clinical and research expertise and has published more than 200 manuscripts related to endodontic technology and biology. He has authored two books and contributed to several leading textbooks in dentistry; he also is an associate editor for the International Endodontic Journal as well as the Australian Endodontic Journal, an academic editor for PLOS One and serves on the review panel of multiple other journals. Among others awards, Dr Peters has received the Hans Genet Award of the European Society of Endodontology and more recently the Louis I. Grossman Award of the American Association of Endodontists. He is a Diplomate of the ABE, a member of OKU and a Fellow of the International and American Colleges of Dentistry.

Aleksandar D. Rakić leads the Photonics and Microwave Engineering group at The University of Queensland focusing on the development of technologies for sensing and imaging across the electromagnetic spectrum including microwave, terahertz wave and optical systems.

Professor Rakić’s research focuses on the principles of laser feedback interferometry with semiconductor lasers, and on the application of these principles to imaging and sensing. Rakić group pioneered the development of several world’s first laser-feedback interferometric sensors including systems based on monolithic Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser arrays (VCSELs), blue-green lasers, terahertz quantum cascade lasers and mid-infrared interband cascade lasers.

His current focus is on the development of sensing and imaging systems exploiting the THz spectrum for applications from security and defence to in vivo biomedical imaging. His other principal contributions relate to the design and characterization of surface-emitting optoelectronic devices (VCSELs and light emitting diodes) and modelling of optical materials.

A/Prof Barbara Rolfe is a Group Leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. A/Prof Rolfe is an immunologist and cell biologist, whose major research interests are the role of the innate immune system in cancer, the identification of novel therapeutic strategies for cancer, and nanomaterial safety. Her research has led to the identification of a previously unknown mechanism by which dysregulation of the immune system contributes to cancer development and growth, and provided information regarding the immune response to nanomaterials and the influence of physicochemical characteristics on biodistribution and cellular uptake. A/Prof Rolfe has used mouse models and small peptide agonists and antagonists to investigate the role of the innate immune system in tumour development and growth. This research demonstrated for the first time an important role for complement proteins in promoting tumour growth via regulation of immunosuppressive innate immune cells. Ongoing research is aimed focussed on gaining a better understanding of the role of complement proteins in tumour growth, developing novel immunotherapeutic strategies for cancer and investigating the application of nanomaterials for targeted delivery of anti-cancer drugs.

Trevor Russell is a Professor of Physiotherapy and the Director of the RECOVER Injury Research Centre where he leads a stream of research on Technology Enabled Rehabilitation. He is also co-director of both the Centre for Research in Telerehabilitation and the Telerehabilitation Clinic at the University of Queensland. His research focusses on the use of digital technologies for the remote delivery of health services with a particular focus on telerehabilitation technologies. Specifically his research aims to develop innovative computer based hardware and software solutions to enable the provision of rehabilitation services remotely via the Internet; to further the evidence base of technology enabled rehabilitation through controlled clinical trials; to evaluate the treatment efficacy of specific technology enabled interventions; investigate cost-benefit factors related to technology enabled services; and develop best practice guidelines for the implementation of technology enabled services in the rehabilitation sciences. His work is amongst the earliest and most extensive in this field.