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Dr Clark is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Biomedical Sciences where he is Head of the Peptide Chemical Biology Lab. He completed his PhD in 2000 at the UQ Chemistry Department studying marine natural products chemistry and chemical ecology with Prof. Mary Garson. He then shifted his research focus towards peptide chemistry, structural biology and drug design when he was recruited to the lab of Prof. David Craik at the IMB. His current research focus is the development of technologies to stabilise peptide therapeutics and the elucidation of the structure/function activity of bioactive peptides.

During my postgraduate studies and postdoctoral fellowship, I gained experience in a wide range of chemical biology techniques as well as in initiating and managing collaborations. Building on a background in chemistry and biochemistry, I developed my skills in peptide chemistry and NMR spectroscopy during my PhD in Australia, synthesizing a variety of disulfide-rich cyclic peptides and elucidating their structures and dynamics by NMR spectroscopy. I have gained further experience in protein chemistry, solid phase peptide synthesis and protein ligations during my postdoctoral fellowship in Vienna, collaborating with Syntab Therapeutics on a project involving synthesis and development of synthetic antibodies for cancer therapy. I have recently taken up a UQ Development Fellowship to establish my independent research area in synthesis and structural biology of posttranslationally modified proteins.

Professor Justin Cooper-White is a global leader in using engineering to solve problems in biology. In addition to holding the position of Head of School and Professor of Bioengineering in the School of Chemical Engineering, he is Affiliate Professor in the AIBN, Director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility-Queensland Node, Research Director of the Herston Biofabrication Institute (a partnership between UQ and MNHHS) and co-Director of the Australian Organoid Facility at UQ. Professor Cooper-White is a past President of both the Australasian Society for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering and the Australian Society of Rheology and held the position of CSIRO Office of the Chief Executive (OCE) Science Leader. He has previously held a Visiting Professor Fellowships at ETH Zurich (2007) and Politecnico di Milano (2012-2013). Professor Cooper-White is the Australian representative and Past President of the Asian Biomaterials Federation; an elected Fellow of and Australian representative on the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering (IUSBE), and an elected Fellow and past vice President of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Cooper-White has many past and currently active international collaborations with world leading research groups at MIT (US); Stanford (USA); ETH (Switzerland); EPFL (Switzerland); SNU (Korea); University Of Grenoble (France); Politecnico di Milano (Italy); UCL (UK); and the Max Planck Institute (Germany). He has performed contract research and consultancy work for many multinational companies, including Unilever in the UK; Nestle International, Switzerland; Rhodia, US; Inion, Finland, Syngenta, UK; and NuFarm, AU since 2001.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of APL Bioengineering (American Institute of Physics Publishing); serves or has served on the editorial boards of Rheological Acta, Soft Materials, Biomicrofluidics and the Open Biomedical Engineering Journal; and is a reviewer of major international journals, including Nature Materials, Nature Methods, Advanced Materials, Lab on a Chip, Stem Cells, Stem Cells and Development, Biomacromolecules, Tissue Engineering, Langmuir, Biomaterials and Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics.

Cozzolino is a Principal Research Fellow with the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI), University of Queensland. He has worked in several positions including Associate Professor in Food Chemistry (RMIT University, Melbourne), Head of Agriculture (CQUniversity, Rockhampton), Senior Research Fellow Barley Breeding Program (University of Adelaide, Adelaide), Team Leader Rapid Analytical Group (The Australian Wine Research Institute, Adelaide), Head of Animal Nutrition (INIA La Estanzuela, Uruguay).

His research focusses on the application of chemometric, machine learning and spectroscopic methods (e.g. NIR, MIR, hyperspectral) in a wide range of fields (eg. food, waste products, agricultural commodities). He has published more than 500 peer-review articles and book chapters (h index 68).

He was presented in 2013 with the Hirschfeld Award by the International Council of Near Infrared Spectroscopy for his outstanding contributions on the field of NIR spectroscopy. He ranked 94 in Australia and 3665 in the world as best-Chemistry-Scientist 2023 (Research.com).

James De Voss received a B. Sc (Hons) in Chemistry and a University Medal from the University of Queensland in 1984. He was a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 scholar at Cambridge University, where he worked on the biosynthesis of Vitamin B12 with Prof. Sir Alan Battersby. A postdoctoral fellowship, again from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, allowed him to work with Prof. Craig Townsend at Johns Hopkins University on the mechanism of DNA cleavage caused by the enediyne antibiotic calicheamicin. He was then introduced to the cytochromes P450 by Prof. Paul Ortiz de Montellano with whom he worked while at the University of California, San Francisco. Since returning to the University of Queensland to take up an academic appointment, initially as a Senior lecturer and subsequently as a Reader and then a Professor, he has continued his interest in problems at the interface of chemistry and biology and currently works with a range of bacterial, insect and mammalian P450s, as well as on the biogenesis of insect pheromones and phytochemistry of herbal medicines.

I was awarded my PhD in Computational Biophysics from the University of Western Australia (2012) for my work on combining molecular modelling and simulation approaches with fluorescence spectroscopy experiments to study mechanosensitive ion channels.

Following this, I carried out Postdoctoral work at the University of Queensland and Curtin University, funded by Early Career Fellowships from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Australian National Health and Research Council (NHMRC). In 2019, I joined UTS under a UTS Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and started my independent research group. In 2021, I returned to the University of Queensland as a Senior Lecturer.

Apart from my research, I am a passionate advocate for mental health in academia and

supporting PhD students. My teaching and supervision are guided by encouraging students to become 'critical thinkers'. I practice mindful leadership and aim to integrate kindness and gratitude into how I lead my research team.

Professor Fairlie is an NHMRC Research Investigator Fellow (Level 3) (2022-present), a Node Leader of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide Protein Science, one of four Centre Directors and former Head of the Division of Chemistry of Structural Biology at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (since 2009), and an Affiliate Professor of the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences. He was previously an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow (2012-2021), a Node Leader at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Advanced Molecular Imaging (2014-2021), an ARC Federation Fellow (2006-2011), an ARC Professorial Fellow (2002-2006), and Scientific Director and Chief Scientific Officer of a startup company. He undertook postdoctoral studies at Stanford University and University of Toronto, postgraduate studies at Australian National University and University of New South Wales, and undergraduate studies at University of Adelaide.

His research group works across the disciplines of chemistry (synthesis, structure, reaction mechanisms), biochemistry (enzyme inhibitors, protein-protein interactions, GPCRs, transcription factors), immunology (innate immune cells in health and disease, mucosal T cells), and pharmacology (molecular pharmacology and human cell signalling, experimental pharmacology in rodent models of human diseases). He has published over 480 scientific journal articles in high impact chemistry journals (e.g. Chem Rev, Acc Chem Res, J Am Chem Soc, Angew Chem Int Edit, Chem Sci, J Med Chem, Org Lett, J Org Chem) and biology journals (e.g. Nature, Science, Nat Rev Endocrinol, Mol Cancer, Immunity, Nature Immunology, Science Immunology, Am J Resp Crit Care Med, J Hepatol, Trends Immunol, Mol Neurodegen, Adv Drug Deliv Rev, Nature Communications, Trends Pharmacol Sci, J Exp Med, J Clin Invest, Kidney Int, Arthritis & Rheum, Science Advances, Pharmacol Ther, Cancer Res, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, Dev Cell, Curr Biol, J Cell Biol, Cell Reports, PloS Biol, Br J Pharmacol, JCI Insight, Diabetes, Mucosal Immunol, etc). He has been a Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate Analytics), with over 37,000 citations and 113 publications with over 100 citations (Google Scholar), and has collaborated with many of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Doctor James Falconer has been an academic at the School of Pharmacy, The University of Queensland since June 2015. Dr Falconer was an assistant lecturer, then research & teaching fellow at the School of Pharmacy, the University of Auckland from 2011 – 2015.

In 2007 he was awarded with the Technology for Industry Fellowship (TIF) from the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science & Technology (FRST) from the NZ Government with joint funding from Pharmaceutical Compounding New Zealand (PCNZ) to complete a PhD under A/Professor Jingyuan Wen and Professor Raid Alany from the University of Auckland, New Zealand for development of a supercritical fluid platform and transdermal delivery of poorly aqueous soluble steriods. As a post-doctoral researcher under A/Professor Zimei Wu and collaboration with Argenta Global in Auckland he worked to help stabilise a veterinary pour-on which resulted in international patents and registered product for cattle. He was then appointed as a lecturer in pharmacy practice and pharmaceutical sciences at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Prior to his academic career, he received a BSc in Genetics 1999 and a Masters in Health Sciences (Bioethics) in 2003 under A/Professor Neil Pickering on the anatomy of the GMO debate from the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. In 2005, he completed a BPharm (Hons) from the University of Auckland and undertook an internship at Middlemore Hospital in 2006, then was employed from 2007 as a ward pharmacist in general surgery and the hospital dispensary and as a community pharmacist - including the 'graveyard' shifts at day/night pharmacies.

Doctor Falconer has established research in supercritical fluid applications for selective extraction as well as in engineering advanced nanoparticulate dosage forms based on lipid and polymeric systems. A backbone to this work is the search for green/er technology to replace organic solvent driven material manufacturing processes and the repurposing of carbon dioxide for good.

Carbohydrate chemistry, medicinal chemistry, drug discovery

Vito Ferro is a Professor in the School of Chemistry & Molecular Biosciences. His research interests are in the area of synthetic carbohydrate chemistry, and drug design and development.

Professor Mary Fletcher is a natural product organic chemist, and led the Natural Toxin group within the Centre for Animal Science, Queensland Alliance for Agricultural and Food Innovation (QAAFI) 2010-2024,before being appointed Emeritus Professor in 2024. She previously worked as a research chemist at both The University Queensland and Queensland Primary Industries (Biosecurity Queensland), before joining the Queensland Alliance for Agricultural and Food Innovation in 2010. Prof Fletcher's current interest focuses on bioactives that reduce enteric methane and the application of slow release delivery systems appropriate to rangeland grazing systems. Prof Fletcher has an industry recognised expertise as an applied organic chemist with a specialist interest in the identification and analysis of natural toxins and other bioactives in a range of plants, fungi and agricultural products. Such toxins and bioactives can affect both human and animal health posing risks to livestock production, food safety and market access.

Prof Fletcher is also an Affiliate Professor in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences (http://www.scmb.uq.edu.au/index.html), and an Affiliated Scientist at the Biosciences eastern & central Africa-International Livestock Research Institute (BecA-ILRI) Hub in Nairobi, Kenya (http://hub.africabiosciences.org/).

Prof Fletcher is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and in 2016 was elected President of the Queensland Branch of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (http://www.raci.org.au/branches/qld-branch).

Venoms play a range of adaptive roles in the animal kingdom from predation to defense to competitor deterrence. Remarkably, despite their biological importance and uniqueness, the evolution of venom systems is poorly understood. New insights into the evolution of venom systems and the importance of the associated toxins cannot be advanced without recognition of the true biochemical, ecological, morphological and pharmacological diversity of venoms and associated venom systems. A major limitation has been the very narrow taxonomical range studied. Entire groups of venomous animals remain virtually unstudied. My research is inherently interdisciplinary, integrating ecological, evolutionary, and functional genomics approaches in order to understand the evolution of venom systems. Studies range from discovering the shock-inducing hypotensive and anticoagulant venom of the iconic Komodo Dragon through to exploring the unique temperature specific adaptations of Antarctic octopus venoms.

Dr Mile Gao is a physicist specialising in condensed matter physics, with a focus on charge carrier dynamics in organic semiconductor devices. His research advances the development of novel measurement techniques to improve the understanding of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic photovoltaics (OPVs). He has pioneered several charge carrier mobility measurement methods, including Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor CELIV (MIS-CELIV), photo-MIS-CELIV, injection-CELIV, and photo-injection-CELIV. These techniques enable precise characterisation of charge transport and generation processes in diode-like structures, addressing key challenges in organic optoelectronics.

Dr. Mile's work has led to significant insights into charge injection, extraction, and mobility in organic semiconductors, with implications for improving device efficiency and stability. His research is highly interdisciplinary, combining physics, materials science, and device engineering.

He has published extensively in high-impact journals and holds a patent for his contributions to the field. As an ARC DECRA Fellow at The University of Queensland, he also teaches and supervises students in advanced experimental techniques for semiconductor characterisation.

Expertise:

• Charge transport in organic semiconductors
• Carrier generation efficiency in OPVs
• Advanced electrical characterisation techniques
• Organic optoelectronic device physics

My research is based on organic materials for uses including energy storage, solar cells, light emitting diodes and sensors. The way that they pack into thin films and the processes that occur at the interfaces between materials are the main areas of interest.

Examples of specific areas of research are:

• Understanding structure in organic optoelectronic devices - Organic devices such as organic light emitting diodes, solar cells and sensors, are constructed using multiple layers of materials that perform different functions such as emitting light and charge transport. The morphology and interaction betweens these layers are very important and we study structure and diffusion in layers and at interfaces using such techniques as X-ray and neutron reflectometry, X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy.

• Materials for energy storage - We are developing new materials for use as cathodes in high-energy rechargeable batteries, particularly lithium sulfur batteries, and supercapacitors. Materials developed so far show potential increases in energy density of 3-5x that of lithium ion batteries.

Dr Giacomotto, NHMRC Emerging Leader, is a young group leader focusing on translational research, genes and diseases, imaging/automatic systems, drug discovery, chemical biology, and medical applications. His work focuses on translating little discoveries made in a single cell or in a model organism to applications or treatments for humans. He has already made discoveries that benefit human health, such as treatment for muscular dystrophies. He is working with a wide diversity of models, including cell lines and mouse models, but he recently spent a lot of time working with the zebrafish model. He believes that this small fish will have an important impact on the seek of treatments for neuromuscular and neurological disorders. Those diseases are very difficult to reproduce in a single cell, making the search for chemical treatments difficult. This fish opens a new avenue for the screening of bioactive compounds and for understanding the progression of these terrible disorders. He believes in translational research, the zebrafish is for him a fantastic complementary model to cell lines in order to recapitulate human diseases and run large-scale experiments. He is working on developing future therapeutical strategies to alleviate the suffering of human patients.

Dr Giacomotto recently established his group at Griffith Research Institute for Drug Discovery (Discovery Biology, Griffith University) and remain an active honorary fellow of the Queensland Brain Institute (The University of Queensland). Dr Giacomotto is currently recruiting. Don't hesitate to contact him for further information.

Dr Giacomotto Laboratory Website

I work at two universities: UQ and Yangzhou University, China.

Research on the relations between two glucose polymers, starch and glycogen, whose structure has major impact on nutrition, diabetes and obesity.

After many years in synthetic polymer research, in 2006 I took up a position at UQ to pursue my interests in the relations between human health and the structures of glucose polymers, especially starch and glycogen, which have complex branched structures. For this purpose, I have built on my knowledge of synthetic polymers. This has led to unique combined experiment and theoretical methods for characterizing the complex molecular architecture of these biopolymers; the target is biosynthesis-structure-property-degradation relations important for human health, and also new biomaterials. This research is leading to new methods for the control and mitigation of obesity, diabetes and colo-rectal cancers; these nutrition-related diseases are reaching epidemic proportions.

I am a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, author of 500 papers, 4 patents and 2 books (on unimolecular reactions and on emulsion polymerization). I was President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Macromolecular Division (1998-2001), Elected Member of the IUPAC Bureau (2002-5), was Chair (1988-95) of the IUPAC Working Party on polymerization modelling and mechanisms, and was one of eight members of the IUPAC Strategy Development and Implementation Committee which carried out a major reorganization of that body. I was Secretary of the International Polymer Colloids Group until 2001, and former Chair of both the Polymer and Physical Chemistry Divisions of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. I am a winner of a Sydney University Excellence in Teaching Award, was awarded the RACI Smith Medal in recognition of outstanding research achievements in chemistry over the past decade, the RACI’s Polymer Medal, shared the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering Medal in 1993 for my work in understanding polymerization mechanisms, the RACI Olle Prize in 1996 for my book on emulsion polymerization, the RACI Physical Chemistry Medal in 1998, the RACI Applied Research Medal in 2005, the RACI Leighton Memorial Medal in 2007 and the Australian Academy of Science Craig Prize (2010). I have been a member of the editorial boards of Carbohydrate Polymers, Biomacromolecules, Journal of Polymer Science, and Polymer, and was Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Polymer Colloids, 2003. I speak fluent French and German as well as my native English, and limited Mandarin.

Since 2012, I have spent half my time at UQ and half in China, under theForeign Experts program. The latter is at YangZHou University (which has one of the best 5 agirculture faculties in China). There is a strong synergy between my Australian and Chinese research groups, with each spending some time in the other location, providing a unique opportunity for my young Australian researchers to learn first-hand about research practice and culture in our largest trading partner; also, I have outstanding facilities there which are significantly used by my Australian research group and by other groups in Australia.