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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

My current appointment is Director of Kidney Services at Redland Hospitals in Metro South, Brisbane, where I practice as a senior consultant nephrologist.

My research interests are varied and include post-transplant anaemia and iron metabolism, and novel measures of iron status such as hepcidin; improving dialysis outcomes though the implementation of evidence-based guidelines; kidney disease due to thrombotic microangiopathy (particularly aHUS) and the role of inhibitors of the complement system in kidney disease; and the use of honey to prevent infections in dialysis patients.

I am committed to teaching medical students and young nephrologists, and am actively involved in medical education at all levels.

Professor Alison Mudge is a clinician researcher based in the large Department of Internal Medicine and Aged Care at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. Her applied research focused on understanding and improving inpatient and post-hospital care for frail older Australians through coordinated multidiscipinary approaches. This has involved research and improvement collaborations with multiple healthcare disciplines (e.g. nursing, physiotherapy, nutrition and dietetics, occupational therapy, exercise science) and medical subspecialties (e.g. geriatrics, rehabilitation medicine, cardiology, vascular surgery, palliative care, anaesthetics, gastroenterology).

Alison was inaugural Clinical Director of the Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation (AusHSI) where she advocated strongly for the importance of implementation science approaches, and she has led numerous workshops and mentoring sessions in implementation science and practice including a seminar series within the Queensland Healthcare Improvement Fellowship program. She has been a Metro North Clinician Research Fellow and led competitive grants from NHMRC and MRFF. She advocates for clinician scientists and for authentic consumer engagement in research and service improvement, and is a highly respected undergraduate and gradute educator. She has served on the steering committee for leading Queensland clinical networks inlcuding the Statewide Older Persons's Health Clinical Network and Queensland Dementia, Ageing and Frailty Network, advocating successfully for changes to policy and practice to improve health and wellbeing of older Queenslanders.

Jochen’s research focusses on monitoring of trace organic pollutants, including pioneering work on sources, fate, monitoring techniques (including development of passive sampling techniques) and trends in human exposure to trace contaminants. More recently his group has been leading research in the field of wastewater epidemiology.

Jochen joined QAEHS in 1997 and was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2012 to understand changes in chemical exposure through integrative sampling and systematic archiving. As part of his research program at QAEHS he has lead numerous national and international studies, such as Australia's National Dioxin Program, the Brominated Flame Retardant Program and a major study to investigate bush-fire emissions (the results of which are included in the UNEP Toolkit). He works closely with governments (state, federal and international including UNEP) on the development of systematic monitoring strategies, including for protection of the Great Barrier Reef. As part of his Future Fellowship, he has established an extensive sample archive, the Australian Environmental Specimen Bank (ESB), to allow retrospective analysis of changes in pollutant exposure in Australia.

Jochen’s work on passive samplers, bioanalytical techniques for emerging chemicals and wastewater epidemiology has received support from ARC and numerous industry partners.

Dr Samantha Mulcahy is the Research Program Manager for the Health and Wellbeing Centre for Research Innovation (HWCRI) and the Queensland Centre for Olympic and Paralymic Studies (QCOPS) and is an affiliate researcher at the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences at The University of Queensland. Dr Mulcahy leads strategic operations and management across the research programs which include the UQ HERA Program: The 360-Kids Community Network.

Dr Mulcahy's program of research includes how behaviour change occurs and how behaviour change strategies can be used to achieve effective outcomes in sitting reduction interventions. She is an expert in the field of workplace sedentary behaviour and the use of behaviour change strategies to achieve changes in health behaviours including physical activity and sedentary behaviour. She holds a Masters in Public Health (Health Promotion and Disease Prevention) and has extensive experience in partnership and stakeholder engagement and management of complex multi-year funded research projects and consultancies.

Maximiliano Müller is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) Research Institute, The University of Queensland (UQ). Maximiliano completed his PhD in Animal Nutrition at UQ in 2021. He was awarded an Industry Placement by the Australasian Pork Research Institute (APRIL) in 2022, which has allowed him to start a training program in the area of feed technology (ongoing). Maximiliano is involved in research projects related to transgenerational nutrition (ARC linkage), heat tolerance (APRIL) and nutritional interventions to control back fat deposition in pigs (APRIL). Maximiliano is also a UQ R&D Feed Mill committee member.

Robert Mullins holds a BPhil in Philosophy and a DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford. His research expertise is in legal philosophy and the theory of legal reasoning. Much of Robert's published work investigates the implications of different accounts of the meaning and use of deontic language developed by logicians and linguists for the understanding of legal rights, obligations, and authority relations. His most recent work focuses on logics of common law reasoning developed by scholars in Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Dr Mullins currently serves as Reviews Editor of the peer-reviewed professional journal, Law and Philosophy. He is an Associate Member of the ARC Centre for Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

Aisling Mulvihill is a postdoctoral researcher in the Thorpe Lab at The Queensland Brain Institute. Her research activities span the topics of social cognition and self-regulation from early childhood to adolescence.

As a speech pathologist, Aisling has extensive clinical expertise in supporting children with learning and social-emotional challenges relating to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). In 2013, she co-authored the Ant Patrol Children’s Stories, a series of six educational children’s stories that aim to support children’s social and emotional learning. The series has been well-received by educators, allied health professionals and parents.

Aisling’s current research investigates the relationship between language and theory of mind, and the use of self-talk to regulate thinking and behavior in young children.

Peter began his career helping to design MPAs in Belize, Central America. On realising how little science was available to guide this he moved to the University of Sheffield to undertake a PhD on the use of remote sensing for mapping coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves. After his PhD, Peter won a NERC Post-doctoral Fellowship to study ecological processes on coral reefs and moved to the University of Newcastle to join the Centre for Tropical Coastal Management Studies. He was then awarded a Royal Society Fellowship to integrate empirical ecological data into models of coral reefs with a view to studying how changes in human activity can affect the health of reefs. At this point he moved to the University of Exeter where he was made Professor at the age of 34. In 2010, Peter moved closer to coral reefs when he moved to the University of Queensland to take up an ARC Laureate Fellowship. He loves living in Australia! Peter was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation in 2010, and is also winner of the Rosenstiel Award for excellence in marine biology and fisheries, and the Marsh Award for contributions to marine conservation.

Professor Sagadevan Mundree is a world-leading expert in agricultural biotechnology, leading research and teams focused on making crops that are more resilient to environmental stresses such as drought and salinity, and value-addition to deliver nutritious products. He focuses on transdisciplinary solutions for challenges facing vulnerable populations in food scarcity and the effects of climate change on food quality and food production. He also integrates concepts of the circular economy to develop sustainable food production approaches. In collaboration with governments, industry, and Indigenous communities, Prof Mundree is creating innovative ways to solve global food challenges.

Luke Munn is a Research Fellow in Digital Cultures & Societies at the University of Queensland. His wide-ranging work investigates the sociocultural impacts of digital cultures, from data infrastructures in Asia to platform labor and far-right radicalisation, and has been featured in highly regarded journals such as Cultural Politics, Big Data & Society, and New Media & Society as well as popular forums like the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. He has written five books: Unmaking the Algorithm (2018), Logic of Feeling (2020), Automation is a Myth (2022), Countering the Cloud (2022), and Technical Territories (2023 forthcoming). His work combines diverse digital methods with critical analysis that draws on media, race, and cultural studies.

Professor Craig Munns is the Mayne Professor of Paediatrics and Director of the Child Health Research Centre, The University of Queensland. Professor Munns is also a Senior Medical Officer in Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes at Queensland Children’s Hospital. He graduated from The University of Queensland, before training in paediatrics and endocrinology at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Brisbane. Professor Munns completed his PhD in paediatric growth disorders through UQ. He then undertook a post-doctoral fellowship in paediatric genetic bone disorders at The Shriners Hospital for Children, Montreal, Canada. From 2004 to 2021, Prof Munns was Senior Staff Specialist in Genetic and Metabolic Bone Disorders and Paediatric Endocrinologist at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney. He also undertook roles as Clinical Program Director, Division of Diagnostic Services and Clinical Trials Lead at Kids Research. As Clinical Trials Lead his focus was on developing a research-intensive health system and introducing advanced therapeutics.

Professor Munns is an international expert in paediatric musculoskeletal disorders. His primary clinical and research interests are in diagnosis and management of primary and secondary bone disorders, including osteogenesis imperfecta, hypophosphataemic rickets, disuse osteoporosis and nutritional rickets. He has undertaken a wide range of investigator initiated and sponsored clinical trials, authored international consensus documents and has supervised numerous PhD and Masters students. Prof Munns is actively involved in national and international scientific societies. He was treasurer of Asia Pacific Paediatric Endocrine Society, is the inaugural treasurer of the International Society of Children’s Bone Health and has chaired the program organising committees Australasian Paediatric Endocrine Group, Australian and New Zealand Bone and Mineral Society and International Conference of Children’s Bone Health.

Although starting off as an historian of the Pacific Islands, I now think of myself more as a biographer with an emphasis on 'telling academic lives'. My experience includes fieldwork in Tuvalu in the late 1970s, being Project Historian at the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania in the early 1980s, and then teaching successively at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education, Bond University and the University of the South Pacific, where I was Associate Professor and Head of Department. As well as being awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Yale University and a Harold White Fellowship at the National Library of Australia, I’ve been an Associate of the Stout Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington and a Scholar at the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury. Between 2001 and 2005, I was the regular interviewer for History Now and then the review editor of the Journal of Pacific History (2005-12). As an undergraduate I founded the Flinders Journal of History and Politics, have twice been Guest Editor of the Journal of Pacific Studies, and most co-editor of a special issue (on ‘Telling Academic Lives’) of the Journal of Historical Biography. I am currently co-editing with Jon Fraenkel (Victoria University of Wellington) a special issue of Round Table in honour of Brij V. Lal.

I am a cultural anthropologist with expertise in medical anthropology and critical global health. I have conducted extensive ethnographic research in Indonesia on health care, gendered violence, education, and racial stigma. My work in Papua/West Papua has tried to document and understand evolving forms of racism and violence, including how people resist and create change. Over the past 15 years I have worked with local Papuan and international research teams on studies of violence, older women's life stories, HIV/AIDS, hospital birth, and health vulnerabilities. My research aims to develop knowledge of the nuances and complexities of conditions and experiences in West Papua, while also working with Papuan scholars and community members to address pressing health and social problems.

I recently completed a study with Els Tieneke Rieke and Meki Wetipo on how urban Papuans understand and experience hospital childbirth, as part of an effort to understand dire maternal health in this location (2023, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology), published in a special issue on 'Reproducing Life in Conditions of Abandonment in Oceania', edited with Alexandra Widmer (York University, Canada). Another recent study funded by the Australian Research Council looked at vulnerabilities in Indonesia with Professor Lyn Parker (University of Western Australia) and others from the UK and Indonesia. The study used ethnography and surveys to develop a deeper, contextual understanding of who is vulnerable, how and why, and thus shed light on the concept of vulnerability and what it means. Recent publications look at education in gender inequality in Indonesia's frontier economy, older women’s narratives of economic agency and survivance (co-authored with Yohana Baransano), and the challenges faced by newlyweds.My article in Asian Studies Review, "West Papuan ‘Housewives’ with HIV: Gender, Marriage, and Inequality in Indonesia," was awarded the 2025 Wang Gungwu Prize by the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA).

Funded by the Australian Research Council, I am currently expanding my research on obstetrics and c-sections to understand the cultures and inequalities of maternity care in Indonesia, both in terms of local cultural needs and preferences, and in relation to the cultures of medicine and obstetrics that exist in hospitals and birth centres. This project is conducted with Dr Els Rieke (Universitas Papua), Associate Professor Najmah (Universitas Sriwijaya), and Dr Elan Lazuardi (Universitas Gadjah Mada). I also maintain ongoing collaborations with researchers at the National University of Singapore and Fiji National University, focused on maternity care.

I am an experienced PhD supervisor in medical anthropology and gender studies. I am interested in working with research students who wish to conduct anthropological research in Indonesia or the Pacific Islands. I teach undergraduate and postgraduate courses in medical anthropology (ANTH2250/7250), Pacific anthropology (ANTH2020) and gender (SOCY2050).

Beatrice is a Postdoctoral Researcher with a special interest in behaviour change and digital health promotion. She has extensive experience in clinical trial management and evaluation. Following on from a Master’s Degree in Medical Science, her PhD was dedicated to the development of a mobile app that targeted adults’ physical activity and sleep health. The body of work she has contributed to has incorporated a wide range of research methods and study designs and her research outputs have added important knowledge to the field of multiple behaviour change and non-clinical sleep interventions. In more recent roles, Beatrice has worked on wide-scale implementation projects targeting the health and wellbeing of young children. Beatrice’s work is about maximising impact, both in the scientific field and out in the community by way of generating high quality data and improving equity of access to evidence-based resources.