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Dr Jon Links's research interests are in: Lie Algebras, Quantised Algebras, Knot Theory, Exactly Solvable Models, Algebraic Bethe Ansatz, Models of Correlated Electrons and Models of Cold Atoms.

He received his PhD from the University of Queensland in 1993. His current research projects are in the field of designs for and control of integrable quantum devices.

Dylan Lino researches in constitutional law and colonialism, especially in their historical and theoretical contexts. Much of his research has focused on the rights and status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples within Australia's settler constitutional order. He has also written on the imperial entanglements of British constitutional thought, focusing on the work of Victorian jurist AV Dicey. He holds a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and a Bachelor of Arts from UNSW, a Master of Laws from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of Melbourne.

Dylan's research can be downloaded from SSRN. He is also on Twitter at @Dylan_Lino.

Prof Lipman is Executive Director of the Burns Trauma & Critical Care Research Centre; Professor of Anesthesiology & Critical Care, The University of Queensland and until recently (for 23 years) was Director of Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital; He holds Honorary Professorial appointments at Chinese University of Hong Kong, Unversity of Witwatersrand (South Africa) and Qeensland University of Technology.

He has qualifications in anesthesia and intensive care and has set up and been in charge of a number of Intensive Care and Trauma Units in South Africa before coming to Australia in 1997. he currently manages a large multidisciplinary research team with an output of over 120 peer-reviewed articles per annum. He has supervised dozens of PhD students to completion and is currently supervising 6 PhD, 1 MPhil and 1 MBBS/Hons students. Prof Lipman has been instrumental in developing the anaesthesiology and critical care component of a graduate medical program for Queensland and continues to lecture to medical and postgraduate students.

Prof Lipman is the author of over 550 peer reviewed publications, 30 book chapters and has been invited to deliver over 120 lectures at national and international conferences in many countries across the world. His research interests include all aspects of infection management in intensive care and he has a special interest in the pharmacokinetics of antibiotic dosage, an area in which he received his MD in 2006. His research into antibiotic usage in acute situations has received international recognition and he is regarded as an expert in the field. As such, he and his research team have conducted and presently conduct a number of clinical trials in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Europe and the UK.

Prof Lipman is an Editorial Board member for 10 International Journals, is Section Editor on four Antibiotic related Journals, reviews for 23 journals and is an external reviewer for NHMRC project grants (Local) as well as equivalent for a number overseas countries.

He is Chief Investigator on a 7000 patient International Randomised Controlled Trial comparing bolus dosing versus continuous infusions of meropenem and piperacillin-tazobactam

Dr Robyn Littlewood – Chief Executive, Health and Wellbeing Queensland

As leader of the state’s first dedicated prevention agency, Dr Littlewood is a passionate advocate for health promotion in Queensland.

Dr Littlewood believes every Queenslander has the right to better health, with expertise in driving outcomes for individual patients and populations in the area of non-communicable diseases. She is relentless in driving policy and action to achieve fairness for all and reach the right communities at the right time.

An experienced leader, researcher, clinician, academic and educator, Dr Littlewood has more than 25 years’ experience working with the most vulnerable patients and families across paediatric obesity prevention, nutrition and dietetics.

Dr Littlewood holds a raft of formal qualifications in dietetics, business, research and executive leadership from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), James Cook University and The University of Queensland (UQ). These include a PhD, Master of Business Administration, Master of Medical Science and Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. As such, bringing universities, industry, government and communities together to solve problems is key to her work.

She currently holds three Adjunct Professor appointments with Griffith University, QUT and UQ, and is proud to be working with these outstanding teaching and research universities. Dr Littlewood remains passionate about education, fostering student learning opportunities at HWQld.

Before her Chief Executive appointment in 2019, Dr Littlewood was a member of the inaugural HWQld board and held titles including Director, Health Services Research, Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service and Conjoint Associate Professor, Nutrition at UQ. While Director of specialist private nutrition practice ChildD, she led the first national paediatric dietetics training course in Australia, alongside Dietitians Australia.

Dr Littlewood has been awarded for her work and proudly accepted the QUT Outstanding Alumni Award (Health) in 2020. She has also held several Board roles including Board Director, Dietitians Australia, and has been awarded Fellow, Dietitians Australia for her service.

Dr Littlewood holds a range of national and Queensland clinical and academic positions and has been an invited speaker at state, national and international conferences. Her extensive list of publications includes co-authoring ‘Digital health and precision prevention: shifting from disease-centred care to consumer-centred health’ in peer-reviewed journal, Australian Health Review.

She is most passionate about children’s health, especially those who need it the most. Through her role at HWQld, Dr Littlewood’s focus remains firmly on driving an agenda of equity to ensure the next generation of Queenslanders live healthy and active lives.

Dr Qiao Liu is an Honorary Professor at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland and Professor at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. His previous posts include Associate Professor at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland; Lee Ka Shing Visiting Professor at McGill University Faculty of Law; and specially appointed Tengfei Adjunct Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University School of Law (China).

Professor Liu teaches in and researches a wide range of business-related common law and Chinese law topics including contract, commercial law, unjust enrichment, international commercial law (sale of goods, transfer of funds etc) and financial transactions, with a particular interest in comparative study of Chinese and Anglo-Australian private law. He has published widely in the above areas. His articles have appeared in leading journals including the Modern Law Review, American Journal of Comparative Law and the Cambridge Law Journal. His book entitled “Anticipatory Breach” (Hart Publishing Oxford 2011) is regarded by epic common law courts and top scholars as a leading monograph on an important topic of English contract law. Professor Liu’s works have been cited by epic common law courts including the High Court of Australia, the Singapore Court of Appeal and the New Zealand Court of Appeal as well as by the English High Court and the House of Lords.

Professor Liu has been Founding Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the Chinese Journal of Comparative Law (OUP) since 2013 and has served as its Editor-in-Chief since late 2017. He is also Foreign-related Commercial and Maritime Adjudication Expert at the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing, a United Nations Commission on International Trade Law expert for updating the UNCITRAL Digest of Case Law on the CISG and currently a contributor to Chitty on Contracts: Hong Kong. Professor Liu has won highly prestigious and fiercely competitive grants in Australia, China and elsewhere, and has served as expert witness in law courts in Australia, Singapore and Greater China in a number of international commercial cases and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) and a listed arbitrator with the South China International Arbitration Centre (Hong Kong).

Dr Minran Liu is a Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. His teaching and research focus on Asia-Pacific security, East Asian politics, Chinese politics and strategy.

Before joining UQ, he was a Lecturer in International & Political Studies at the School of Humanities & Social Sciences, UNSW Canberra, at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). Additionally, he served as a Lecturer in International Relations within the Discipline of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, where he was also the Degree Director for the Master of International Security program. He is a Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee of the International Studies Association (ISA) Asia-Pacific. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI), University of Technology Sydney and an Honorary Member of the University of Sydney's China Studies Centre. He regularly provides commentary on international relations through various Australian and international media outlets, including ABC, SBS, Sky News, CNA, The Straits Times, China Daily, and Het Financieele Dagblad, among others.

Dr. Min Liu is currently an ARC DECRA at the University of Queensland. He received his PhD in Polymer Science and Chemical Engineering from the University of Melbourne in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Qiang Fu, Prof. Paul Webley, and Prof. Greg Qiao. He then joined the University of British Columbia as a postdoctoral fellow, where he worked with Prof. Zachary Hudson on self-assembling block copolymers and porous materials from 2022 to 2024. Subsequently, he moved to the University of Toronto to work with Prof. David Sinton and Prof. Edward Sargent (2024-2025), focusing on electrochemical CO and CO2 reduction.

Shuang is an internationally recognised intercultural communication expert, specialising in the areas of ageing and immigration, acculturation, identity negotiation, and intercultural relations. Her research examines how older people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds build a sense of home as they live and age in a foreign land; how family and community care can be integrated to provide culturally appropriate, accessible and sustainale care for older people; how older people interact with their physical, social, cultural, and digital environments to develop attachment to place; and the consequences of these interactions for well-being. Shuang's work has been published in high-ranking international journals, and two sole authored books: Identity, hybirdity and cultural home (2015; Rowman & Littlefield) and Chinese migrants ageing in a foreign land (2019; Routledge). Her lead-authored textbook, Introducing intercultural communication: Global cultures and contexts, is in its 4th edition, and previous three editions have been adopted in 26 countries across 4 continents, with holdings in libraries of prestigeous institutions including Stanford University, Yale University, University of Oxford, University of Cape Town, and University of Zurich. Shuang is a fellow of the International Academy of Intercultural Research.

Shuang welcomes inquires from prospective Higher Degreee by Research students who are interested in working with her on their theses in any of the related research areas.

Mark Liu is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow focusing on the potential for clinical trials to affect change on a larger, longer-term scale. He was the interning early-career researcher for a multidisciplinary patient safety trial conducted at eight hospitals across Sydney, Melbourne and regional New South Wales. His doctoral research program involved physical activity for cancer patients, with an emphasis on creating long-term behaviour change for underserved groups.

Methodological expertise:

• Implementing trials in real-world contexts
• Behaviour change theory
• Consumer involvement
• Leveraging routinely collected healthcare data for research
• Other areas of interest: supportive care for people with cancer, inequities in healthcare

Bio

Dr. Yang Liu is an evolutionary geneticist, currently working at the University of Queensland (UQ) as a Research Fellow. Prior to UQ, he obtained a PhD from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and worked in research as a postdoc at UBC and University of Cambridge. He is broadly interested in the eco-evolutionary dynamics of plant populations that have undergone environmental heterogeneity over spatiotemporal scales. The goal of his research is to increase our understanding of the impacts of major episodes in plant demography and life histories on trait evolution and to foster sustainability. He tackles research questions at the interface between ecology and evolutionary biology with the integration of population genetics and quantitative genomics to elucidate the ecological and genetic basis of phenotypic traits and biological adaptation.

Currently, he leverages available Arabidopsis natural accessions across its geographic distribution range, coupled with their genomic data, to perform common-garden and divergent selection experiments. From these he aims to dissect features of the genetic architecture of traits and to reveal their relationships to environmental conditions. He is focusing on the shoot branching phenotype and its associated traits including flowering timing.

ECO-EVO-GENOMICS TEAM

Three PhD positions available in 2023-2025

Ongoing Projects

Project 1: Unification of selection and inheritance informs adaptive potential for generations to come (Applications open in 2023; CLOSED)

Natural selection acts on phenotypes and produces immediate phenotypic effects within a generation. In this short-term process, some phenotypes are more successful than others. Use of single traits for selection analysis could generate opposing outcomes and cannot predict how selection operates on an organism. In contrast, multivariate selection in trait combinations utilizes the attribute of functional integrations to reveal how selection works in a multi-dimensional trait space. Selection is an important force driving evolution but not equal to evolution; the latter leads to changes in genetic variation. Only through assessment of the evolutionary responses of phenotypes can we understand the transmission of such selection from one generation to the next. How does selection occurring within a generation affect evolution across generations? In the project, we aim to address the question by unifying the two processes to forecast evolutionary potential in relation to selection. To that end, we partition genetic variance into components based on an experimental design, employ experimental evolution to estimate additive genetic variance-covariances (G) on quantitative scales and evaluate G-matrix evolution. We eventually hope to elucidate how populations subjected to artificial selection move along evolutionary trajectories and whether there are genetic constraints making the fitness optimum evolutionarily inaccessible.

Project 2: Genetic and ecological bases of shoot branching divergence across Arabidopsis species-wide accessions (Applications open in 2024; CLOSED)

Spatial patterns of genetic variation are shaped by environmental factors, topological features, and dispersal barriers. As a result, we often can identify population genetic structure stratified by geographic locations or ecological niches, the drivers of population isolation by distance or the environment, clinal genetic variation over space in alignment with gradually varying environment gradients, and adaptive genetic variation in relation to environmental variables. At the ecological level, assembly rules uncover the coordination of phenotypic traits along environmental clines. Tradeoffs between traits represent the consequence of environmental filters and reflect adaptation to environmental heterogeneity. For example, three fundamental adaptive strategies are delineated by a CSR theory, that is, Competitors, Stress-tolerators, and Ruderals. As such, ways of genetic and phenotypic assemblage over space and throughout time point to a role for natural selection driven by spatially varying environmental conditions to maintain genetic variation that confers natural variation in phenotypes. In this project, we focus on an important agronomic trait – shoot branching – due to its important contribution to the overall shoot architecture of a plant and being a potential target for yield optimization. We aim to dissect features of the genetic architecture of the trait and to reveal its relationships to environmental conditions. We integrate geographic, environmental, and genomic data from the 1001 Arabidopsis Genomes Project, coupled with the branching phenotype measured in selected accessions and then forecasted for the rest of the 1001 accessions using machine-learning models, to investigate the ecological relevance and genetic underpinnings of branching divergence across the Arabidopsis species-wide accessions. Our study has implications for enhancing our understanding of the genetic and ecological basis of shoot branching divergence and the potential for generating novel knowledge for improving phenotypic predictability.

Project 3: Dimensionality, modularity, and integration: Insights from the architecture features of pan-genomes, pan-transcriptome, pan-epigenomes, and pan-chromatin (applications open in 2025) Application Portal ALSO ACCEPTING EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FROM INTERNATIONAL APPLICANTS

Organisms are functionally integrated systems, where interactions among phenotypic traits make the whole more than the sum of its parts. How is a suite of traits assembled into an adaptive module? How is an intramodule rewired to form a regulatory network? What is the persistence and stability of a module under exposures to perturbations triggered by altered interactions between the response to disparate environmental conditions or between the responses of multiple traits to the same environment? What constrains modules to vary independently, reflecting the integration and canalization of evolutionary trajectories? In this project, we utilize a compilation of pan-genomes, pan-transcriptome, pan-epigenomes, and pan-chromatin resources of Arabidopsis thaliana to uncover how dimensionality, modularity, and integration are organized at different omics levels including genetic polymorphisms, structural variants, RNA isoforms, expression abundance, epigenetic imprinting, and chromatin accessibility. Ultimately, we apply such functional elements to multivariate genomic selection, in the hope of enhancing multilayered omics-enabled prediction.

Dr Liu is a research fellow with more than 15 years of experience in the field of pharmacometrics. She specialises in population pharmacokinetic modelling and provides popPK analysis and dosing simulation support for various projects in Centre of Research Excellence RESPOND