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Dr. Tatiana Proboste is a Research Fellow at the Spatial Epidemiology Lab (UQ), specialising in zoonotic disease transmission and spatiotemporal analysis. Her work utilises spatial models and network analysis techniques to enhance our understanding of disease transmission dynamics, particularly within wildlife populations and at the wildlife-human interface.

As a veterinarian with a robust background in terrestrial ecology and biodiversity management, Dr. Proboste brings a unique perspective to her research. She holds a Master’s degree from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, where she focused on wildlife disease ecology and molecular tools. Her academic pursuits led her to earn a PhD from the University of Queensland in 2020, with her doctoral research centring on the use of genetic analysis tools to study wildlife’s role in disease transmission in modified environments.

Dr. Proboste’s contributions to research are extensive and varied. She has been involved in projects ranging from the molecular detection of tick-borne pathogens to the development of tools for exploring wildlife’s role in disease transmission. Recent years have seen her focus on investigating mosquito-borne disease outbreaks, identifying Q fever clusters in Queensland and associated risk factors, and applying network analysis to estimate contact rates in feral pig populations in eastern Australia. In addition to her research, Dr. Proboste is a casual lecturer at the School of Veterinary Science. She is also part of the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, Q fever Interest Group and the HEAL Network

I am a Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, specialising in systems immunology, data mining, and artificial intelligence. I have made significant contributions to vaccine and biomarker discovery and to defining the molecular basis of host-pathogen immunity.

My academic background includes a Diploma in Physics from La Sapienza University in Italy (2005) and a Ph.D. in Molecular Pathogenesis and Immunology from the University of Perugia, Italy (2011). I have received training from several leading institutions, including Imperial College, LSHTM, the University of Oxford, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and QIMR Berghofer, where I developed a solid foundation in the analysis of multi-omics data. My work has led to the identification of several malaria vaccine candidates currently under evaluation in pre-clinical trials in a project funded by the National Foundation for Medical Research and Innovation. I recently received an NIH RO1 grant alongside PI Doolan to develop the first T cell-exclusive malaria vaccine.

My current research interests can be divided into five general themes:

1)System-based genomic approaches to inform the rational design of vaccines against complex human pathogens

2) Defining the molecular basis of immune heterogeneity between individuals using a system-based approach

2)Biomarker discovery for EBV-related cancers

3)Epigenetics and host immunity

4)Application of advanced data mining techniques in medical genomics

Dr Melinda Protani is an epidemiologist with over 15 years experience in research and tertiary education. She is the current Program Director for the Master of Epidemiology at UQ. Her research is focussed on cancer aetiology, survivorship and patterns of care, with a particular interest in inequity in access to health services and the receipt of optimal cancer care. Dr Protani has experience in a number of methods including medical record audits, surveys of the general population, patient groups and clinicians, and data linkage using registry and administrative datasets.

I am Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. I was educated at the University of Edinburgh, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, the University of California at Berkeley (as a Fulbright-Hays Scholar), and the University of Cambridge (as an Andrew Carnegie Scholar). I have held various visiting scholarships/fellowships/professorships, including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Georgetown University, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. In 2000 Jack Copeland and I founded the online Turing Archive for the History of Computing, which has received the Encyclopedia Britannica Internet Guide Award for Excellence and the Scientific American Sci/Tech Award. We received a Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand for research into the philosophical foundations of cognitive and computer science.

Scaling-up fermentation processes is not straightforward due to the emergence of concentration gradients at scale. For gas fermentation processes, with CO2, CO and CH4 and H2, scaling is even more challenging as high mass transfer rates need to be obtained. In his work, Lars is developing a framework to reliably scale-up gas fermentation processes, considering both mass transfer and concentration gradients. We aim to employ mechanistic models, combined with wet-lab data, to develop relationships and fluid dynamic (CFD) models to estimate the fermentation performance at industrial scale. He specialised in topics like bioreactor and bioprocess design, bioprocess scale-up/scale-down, mass transfer and transport phenomena, metabolic and kinetic modelling and simulation techniques.

Artem Pulemotov holds a Bachelor's degree from Kyiv University and a PhD from Cornell University. His research is primarily in the field of geometric analysis. He had been a Dickson Instructor at the University of Chicago before joining the School of Mathematics and Physics at UQ as a lecturer in 2012.

Dr Cheneal Puljevic is an ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow at the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame at the School of Public Health. Her current research focuses on the drivers and deterrents of illicit tobacco use. Her other research interests include smoking cessation among disadvantaged populations, drug checking (pill testing), alcohol-fuelled violence, and substance use harm reduction.

Cheneal is also the Bachelor of Health Sciences Honours (HLTH6014) program director and course convenor, a core research team member for the Global Drug Survey, an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Drug Policy, a Deputy Editor for Drug and Alcohol Review, and the Queensland Research Lead for The Loop Australia, a not-for-profit organisation aiming to implement drug checking (pill testing) services and partner operating organisation of CheQpoint, Queensland's first fixed-site drug checking service. She is the co-chair of the School of Public Health's Early Career Researcher committee.

Cheneal was previously employed as the Research Operations Manager for the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame (0.8FTE; 2021-2022) and as a Research Fellow (0.2FTE; 2018-2022) at the Centre for Health Services Research. In the latter role, she was the Program Manager for the Global Substance Use and Mental Health unit, where she conducted and managed a number of research projects related to substance use, including the Queensland evaluation of the Tackling Alcohol-Fuelled Violence Policy (QUANTEM), a NIH-funded project on the impacts of roadside breath testing, and several projects using data from the Global Drug Survey (on topics such as changes in alcohol and cannabis use following COVID-19 restrictions, perceptions of alcohol warning labels, cannabis use patterns, and patterns of methamphetamine "cooking").

In 2024, Cheneal was awarded the School of Public Health's award for the top-performing Level C in a research-focused position; in 2023 she was awarded the School of Public Health's Rising Star award, and in 2022, she was awarded the School's prize for the top performing Level B academic in a research-focused position. In 2020, she was awarded the Australasian Professional Society for Alcohol and Other Drugs (APSAD)'s Early Career Award. In 2019, she was awarded the Centre for Health Services Research's Outstanding Early Career Researcher award.

Cheneal completed her PhD in 2018 at Griffith Criminology Institute at Griffith University, with her thesis focusing on smoking cessation among people who have experienced incarceration. She completed an Honours degree in Psychology at the University of Cape Town in 2011, with her thesis focusing on screening and brief interventions for alcohol-related injuries at an emergency centre.

Cheneal is available to supervise honours, Masters and HDR students on a variety of topics; please get in touch to discuss.

Dr David Pullar's research interests are in: Geographical Information Science (Spatial analysis, Spatial modelling languages and frameworks, 3D visualisation, Environmental database applications) and Landscape Modelling (Catchment hydrology, Landuse change, Landscape dynamics).

David Pullar received his PhD from the University of Maine in 1994. His current research projects are in the fields of:

Incorporating Level Set Methods in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for Land-Surface Process ModellingUsing Spatial Simulation to Create a Process Classification of Provincial BioregionsEnvironmental Database Management and IntegrationHis collaborators include:Coastal CRCIntelligent Real-time Imaging and Sensing (IRIS)The Ecology CentreHigh Performance Computing, VisAC Lab

Breast and Endocrine Surgeon, Mater Hospitals South Brisbane.

Previous Fellowships at University of Nottingham(UK) and Mayo Clinic (USA)

Chairman, Foundation for Breast Cancer Care

Senior Surgeon Breast Screen Qld Metro south Brisbane

Dr Ruirui Qiao is a Group leader and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), University of Queensland. Dr Qiao received her BSc (2005) and MSc (2007) in Peking University major in pharmaceutical Science and was a tenured associate professor (2016–2017) and assistant professor (2009–2015) at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), where she received her PhD (Physical Chemistry) in 2014. In 2017, she joined ARC Centre of Bio-Nano Science (CBNS), Monash University as a project co-leader. Currently, she leads a nanobiotechnology research group at AIBN, focusing on the development of functional nanohybrids toward biomedical and clinical translations.

Dr Qiao has made significant contributions to both research fields with work in synthetic methodology development, surface functionalisation, enhancing the physical properties of inorganic nanoparticles, as well as bioapplications in molecular imaging and drug delivery. She has publushed >110 peer reviewed articles in international top refereed journals such as Science, Nature Communications, ACS Nano, Chemistry of Materials, Advanced Materials, Polymer Chemistry, and so on., with citation >7700 times (H-index = 46). Her current research focuses on the development of advanced polymer/inorganice hybrid materials, employing cutting-edge technologies such as inorganic nanoparticle synthesis, polymer synthesis, PET-RAFT, and 3D/4D printing. Her group aims to harness these advanced materials for various biomedical applications, including disease diagnosis, drug/gene delivery, tissue engineering, antibacterial solutions, and soft robotics.She received NHMRC Investigator Grant (2020) and UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award (2021).

She is currently serving in Editorial Board and Associate Editor of Science Advances (AAAS), Journal of Nanobiotechnology and Cancer Nanotechnology (BMC, Part of Spring Nature), and Guest Editors of Biosensors and Frontier in Pharmacology.

Dr Qiao is looking for highly motivated Ph.D. students, and highly competitive full scholarship can be provided. The University of Queensland ranks in the top 50 as measured by the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities. The University also ranks 45 in the QS World University Rankings, 52 in the US News Best Global Universities Rankings, 60 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and 55 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities.

My research focuses on data science methods, including theory and application for various real-world scenarios, such as recommender systems, social network, urban computing, engineering, law, health etc. I am particularly interested into graph neural networks, large language models (LLMs, MLLMs), etc.

I am actively looking for PhD students (multiple positions) starting in Year 2025.