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I am a Professor of Linguistics in the School of Languages and Cultures and the Australian Research Council (ARC) Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellow (2025-2030). I am also a Fellow in the Academy for Social Sciences Australia (ASSA), a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (AAH) and an Australian Fulbright Senior Scholar (2025-2026). I was also the Deputy Director of the UQ node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language which finished in 2022.

Some of my research focuses on language evolution and contact processes across northern Australia where I have worked for the past two decades. In 2021, I won the Eureka Award for Interdisciplinary Scientific Research together with Cassandra Algy, Lindell Bromham and Xia Hua for this work. My new ARC DP Project 'Dingo Lingo' with Myf Turpin and Linda Barwick (U-Syd) is looking at canine words across northern Australia to understand their spread across the continent and their relationship with First Nations Peoples. My interests are also in the relationship between Indigenous Knowledges and Western Science. One place this exploration plays out is in my co-authored book 'Tamarra: A Story of Termites on Gurindji Country' (Hardie Grant, 2023) which won the 2024 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Children's Literature.

I have co-compiled four dictionaries (Gurindji, Bilinarra, Ngarinyman and Mudburra) and two grammars (Bilinarra and Gurindji) and two ethnobiologies (Bilinarra/Gurindji/Malngin and Jingulu/Mudburra). I am also the author of Case-Marking in Contact (Benjamins, 2011), co-author of Understanding Linguistic Fieldwork (Routledge, 2018) and Songs from the Stations (Sydney University Press, 2019) and co-editor of Loss and Renewal: Australian Languages since Colonisation (Mouton, 2016) and Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country (2016, Aboriginal Studies Press). I have also authored over 55 papers on language contact and change in academic volumes and journals. In 2021, I also won the Linguistic Society of America (LSA)'s Kenneth L Hale Award for linguistic fieldwork.

I studied at the University of Queensland between 1995-2001. Between 2001-04, I worked as a community linguist at Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation facilitating revitalisation programs for Bilinarra and Ngarinyman people. I joined the Aboriginal Child Language project (University of Melbourne) in 2004 as a PhD student. I completed my PhD in 2008 and continued documenting Gurindji, Bilinarra and Gurindji Kriol as a part of the Jaminjungan and Eastern Ngumpin DOBES project, then with my own ELDP grant at the University of Manchester and finally returned to UQ with an ARC APD, DECRA and Future Fellowship. I have also held an ARC DP with Rob Pensalifini which studied contact between Mudburra and Jingulu and Mudburra and Kriol.

My research integrates ruminant nutrition, gut microbiology, and sustainable livestock production, with a strong focus on improving feed efficiency and manipulating the rumen to reduce methane emissions. Passionate about early-life programming, my lab explores how targeted nutritional strategies from birth can optimise lifetime performance and environmental sustainability. The work we conduct spans the full spectrum of product development—from laboratory testing to animal trials—conducted in both controlled environments and large-scale grazing and feedlot systems, often in collaboration with industry partners.

Dr Cristyn Meath is the Hub Director, Sustainable Infrastructure Research Hub at the University of Queensland, a Senior Lecturer at The University of Queensland Business School where she teaches Decision Making & Reporting for Sustainability in the Masters of Business, and Co-Founder of the Infrastructure CoLab.

Cristyn's research investigates how to increase the adoption of sustainable products and practices in industries by improving understanding of the way individual employees, organisations, governments and consumers make decisions related to sustainability. Cristyn has spent a number of years investigating sustainable materials adoption in infrastructure and also co-designing solutions with industry and government to support the transition towards decarbonisation and circular economy. Other sustainability challenges examined in her research include climate change, the energy transition, natural capital decline, circular economy and economic inequality focusing on change enablers such as decision making, corporate reporting, emerging technology, and new collaboration models supporting industry-led sustainability transitions.

Prior to commencing at UQ Business School Cristyn worked with numerous businesses to improve their sustainability, advising business sustainability consultants, and delivering guest lecturers on the topic.

https://aibe.uq.edu.au/profile/839/cristyn-meath

Professor Sarah Medland (OAM, FASSA, FAHMS, PhD) is a Psychiatric and Statistical Geneticist working in Neuroimaging and Mental health genetics. Her work bridges Genetics, Psychology, Neuro-Imaging, Health Economics and applied Statistics with a focus on understanding the genetic and environmental contributions to human behaviour and disease. She chairs the genetics working group of the ENIGMA neuroimaging consortium and is an active member of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium.

Primary Appointment: Coordinator of the Mental Health Research Program and Group Leader (Psychiatric Genetics) QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.

ORCID: 0000-0003-1382-380X

ResearcherID: C-7630-2013

Scopus Author ID: 34571085600

Email: sarah.medland@qimrberghofer.edu.au

Qualifications

2006 PhD (Psychology), University of Queensland

Dean's Award for Outstanding Research Higher Degree Thesis

2000 BA Hons (Psychology), University of Queensland, 2000 (Psychology Double Major, English Minor)

Prof David Mee's research interests are in Hypersonic and Supersonic Flow.

After completing his PhD at UQ, he spent five years as a Research Fellow in the turbomachinery research group at Oxford University in the U.K. He returned to UQ as an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow in 1991 and joined the academic staff of the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1993. He served as Head of the Division of Mechanical Engineering from 2007 to 2017, acting Head of the School of Engineering from January to July 2009 and Head of the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering from July 2009 to February 2017. He retired in 2020 and is currently an Emeritus Professor in the School.

David's main areas of research are focussed in the field of hypersonics aerothermodynamics. He has undertaken much research on rapid response, stress-wave force balances, which are essential technology for categorising the performance of scramjet engines in transient facilities, such as shock tubes. He was a member of the team that conducted the first known wind-tunnel test in which a scramjet vehicle produced net thrust. He has also published on the transient processes in the latter stages of boundary layer transition in hypersonic flows.

Paul Meehan's research interests are in: Smart Machines; Railway Engineering and Technology, Analysis and Control of Nonlinear Instabilities and chaos in rolling processes, spacecraft systems and biological/human body processes, advanced manufacturing modelling and analysis.

Paul Meehan is an expert in modelling, analysis and control in non-linear mechanics applied to engineering systems. He has over 25 years experience in engineering research, development, commercialization and consulting in the areas of non-linear dynamics, vibrations, controls, rolling contact, elastoplastic and wear phenomena, with applications to manufacturing, mining, railway, spacecraft and biomedical systems. He has initiated and led many successful large collaborative R&D projects in this area.

Paul has recently led or is currently leading major projects in novel prediction and control of non-linear phenomena in railway, mining and manufacturing systems, including Decarbonisation, Bearing Degradation Phenomena, Incremental Sheet Forming, Wheel and Brake Squeal, Advanced Duty Detection and Millipede Technology. He has organised three international conferences in various areas of non-linear mechanics and has authored over 140 internationally refereed publications and three international patents in this area. He also teaches several intermediate and advanced level courses in mechanics at the University of Queensland, and consults regularly to high technology industries.

Tim Mehigan is Professor of German in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (elected 2003) and former President of the German Studies Association of Australia (2003-2007). He was Humboldt Fellow at the University of Munich for two years in 1994 and 1995. In 2013 he was awarded the Research Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. In 2017 he was awarded the Fulbright Senior Scholarship.

From 2013 to 2022 Tim has held a guest appointment as Humboldt Prize Winner at the University of Bonn, Germany. In 2017-2018 he was Fulbright Research Fellow in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, USA. Previous appointments include Honorary Professor in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland in 2011-2012.

Tim’s work is focused on two key periods in German and European literary and intellectual history: on the one hand, the literature and philosophy of the time of Goethe and Kant, which is to say, the late 18th and early 19th century; on the other hand, the literature and philosophy of Austrian modernism in the first three decades of the 20th century.

Beyond such a focus, Tim is vitally interested in the connections that flow between literature and philosophy and has explored these in relation to writers such as Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) and Robert Musil (1880-1942) and topic areas such as the deployment of space in literature.

Tim has also recently edited two collections devoted to assessing the work of J.M. Coetzee (Camden House, 2011; Camden House, 2018) and published, with B. Empson, the first English translation of K.L. Reinhold’s major work of philosophy Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens (Walter de Gruyter, 2011). Most recently, with Antonino Falduto (Ferrara), he has edited The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Friedrich Schiller (Palgrave/Macmillan 2022).

Larissa Meinicke's research interests include mathematical notations and techniques for the formal specification and development of computing systems; probabilistic systems; computer security; abstract algebra and refinement algebra; real-time and fault-tolerant systems.

Dr Meinicke is currently a lecturer in the Division of Systems and Software Engineering Research in the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering.

She completed her PhD in the area of Computer Science at the University of Queensland in 2008 under the supervision of Professor Ian Hayes. Since then she has worked as a researcher at the Department of Information Technologies at Åbo Akademi University in Finland, both as a part of Professor Ralph-Johan Back’s Formal Methods and Programming research group, and as a member of the European Commission for Information and Communication Technologies project "Deploy".

From 2009 to 2011 Dr Meinicke worked on the ARC Research project "Hidden-state modelling for modular analysis of information flow, protection and risk evaluation" in conjunction with Associate Professor Annabelle McIver and Professor Carroll Morgan at Macquarie University in Sydney. Information about this research may be found at the Specification and Development of Probabilistic Systems page (below).

Katie currently holds a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within UQ’s Business School. Her research interests include post-disaster resilience, financial and social exclusion from insurance; the social role of weather disaster protection in a climate changed future; cross-sector partnerships and collaboration to address climate change; and, public engagement processes, specifically power imbalances and the use of technical information.

Katie completed her PhD in Environmental Communication in 2020 at UQ. The thesis examines how citizens experienced the public participation undertaken for four proposed mines in Queensland’s Galilee Basin through the lens of fairness and competence in environmental decision-making. The study found that fairness and competence were impeded by three factors: the relationship between inclusion and fairness, mining company control of information, and the Queensland Government’s dual role as regulator of, and beneficiary from, mining projects. These findings have implications for both practice and theory, namely: addressing resource inequality between stakeholders; establishing equitable access to information; and, changing regulatory practice to improve the legitimacy, accountability, and impartiality of public participation.

Katie has taught at UQ since 2018 across a range of Business School management, strategy and sustainability subjects, including most recently as course coordinator of Principles of Strategic Management in the Master of Business program.

Prior to commencing her PhD at UQ, Katie worked in communication roles across a variety of industries including mining, transport, tourism and retail.

Olivia Mejías is a Research Fellow in Critical Minerals and Mine Waste Geoscience at the W. H. Bryan Mining and Geology Research Centre within the Sustainable Minerals Institute and a member of the ARC Training Centre for Critical Resources for the Future. She is also part of the Mine Waste Transformation through Characterisation (MIWATCH) research group. Olivia holds a Masters degree in geometallurgy and has recently submitted her PhD, which focused on indium mobility and transformation in mine waste environments.

A geologist with more than 10 years of combined industry and research experience, Olivia has worked across a range of deposit types and commodities. She has applied geometallurgical frameworks to copper-molybdenum porphyry ores, advanced geochemical studies in cobalt-rich IOCG systems, and most recently characterised indium-bearing mine wastes from copper-tin granite related and copper-gold VMS deposits.

Her research uses multi-scale characterisation approaches to investigate critical minerals in mine waste materials and acid mine drainage. Through this work, she aims to improve understanding of their biogeochemical cycling and to translate these insights into sustainable mineral extraction and geometallurgical practices. This research is supported by experience with a wide range of analytical techniques, including laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), automated mineralogy using Maps Min, MLA and QEMSCAN, LA-ICP-MS, synchrotron based XFM and XAS, atom probe tomography (APT) and geochemical modelling using PHREEQC.

She is a dedicated and collaborative researcher who is passionate about advancing critical minerals science in ores and mine waste materials and about contributing to a more sustainable future.

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 20 years of experience gained in academic, clinical and industrial environments.

He leads the NeuroRehabilitation 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.

Dr Erika MELER, DVM, IPSAV, CEAV, MSc, MVSc, Dipl ACVIM (SAIM), Dipl ECVIM-CA

Senior Lecturer in Small Animal Internal Medicine - Registered Veterinary Specialist

Erika graduated from the National Veterinary School of Lyon (France) in 2003 and continued her clinical training with a rotating internship at the University of Montreal in small animal medicine and surgery (Canada). She pursued her clinical training with a Certificate in advanced studies in internal medicine at the National Veterinary School of Nantes (France) which is equivalent to an Australian Membership. Then interested in laboratory research work, she completed a Master in Oncogenetics at the Medical School of Marseille (France) and worked on the side as veterinary general practitioner.

Erika who enjoys both clinical research and internal medicine practice, decided to take the experience to the next step further. In order to broaden her knowledge and competences in both fields she entered a combined Master in Veterinary Sciences and residency program in small animal internal medicine at the Purdue University Veterinary Teaching Hospital (United States). She was awarded both her Master by the University of Purdue and her Certification in Small Animal Internal Medicine by the American College of Veterinary Medicine in 2010. During her Residency, Erika won the Osborne case report competition organized by the Phi Zeta Society which rewards the best case presentation of the year.

After her residency, Erika worked for about 3 years in one of the biggest emergency and referral private practices in Canada where she founded the internal medicine service. Erika has trained in her career many students, interns, veterinary nurses and mentored younger colleagues. She has given continuing education conferences and written numerous articles summaries for general practitioners. Having worked in both private and academic environments, she can prepare her students for both careers and understands the challenges of both types of practice.

Erika's academic activities encompass clinical teaching and management of referral cases in the department of small animal internal medicine at the University of Queensland Veterinary Medical Centre, classroom teaching for veterinary students in their 3d, 4th and 5th years and veterinary technology students in their 3d year of training, as well as research work bridging human as well as laboratory science and IT technology to clinical practice (so called collaborative and translational medicine). She has also an interest in developing business management field in veterinary medicine as well as innovative teaching methods for veterinary students and professionals.

Erika’s clinical areas of interest are the use of new technologies in veterinary medicine such minimally-invasive techniques (including laser and stenting) in dogs.

Erika's research areas of interest are infectious diseases such as MRSA, MRSP, protozoal, viral and fungal diseases in pet companions.

Erika's teaching areas of interest are the development of new teaching methods in the veterinary clinical setting and the exploration of a new balance between economic needs of teaching hospitals and their educational goals.

Erika is definitively a team player and has an excellent track record in student supervision and graduation. Although veterinary oriented, these themes are also deeply translational so any colleague from a medical or educational background who would like to collaborate is very much welcome to make contact. Erika looks forward to work with any colleagues and students interested any of the themes listed above.