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Professor Rae received her PhD in 2007 in the area of reproductive physiology and has been working in the area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander maternal and infant health and chronic disease since that time. She began as the Group Lead for the Indigenous Health Research group at the Mater Research Institute in a role that bridges the Mater, University of QLD and is actively growing partnerships with the Aboriginal community-controlled health sector in QLD. The importance of maternal health for Indigenous communities has been identified as a critical national research priority by Indigenous communities. Her work has had a multidisciplicinary nature and while always focused on the health of Indigneous Australians she has published in areas including pregnancy and birth outcomes, nutrition, psychosocial health, growth and development during infancy, the use of arts in health education to name a few.She has a particular passion for working in partnership to co-design research projects that support improving health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Her specific focus has primarily been to develop programs that reduce chronic diseases which afflict Aboriginal people more commonly through early detection and diagnosis, health education, and developing a thorough understanding of risk factors that impact on this community. She has mentored her team of staff and students to co-produce and co-disseminate findings from these programs of work and to build research capacity for all team members including those who identify as Indigenous and for those from rural locations of research studies.

Prior to her role at Mater Research, she was the inaugaral Director of the Gomeroi gaaynggal program (2007-2019), which had two major programs of work 1. ArtsHealth for community engagement, health education and health promotion and 2. A Health research program for understanding the development of chronic disease in the Indigenous community through the Gomeroi gaaynggal cohort. Program 1 was successful in transitioning its funding to local Aboriginal community-controlled sector in Tamworth (2019). Prior to its transition, she led a community focussed ArtsHealth program to improve health knowledge, particularly in the areas of social and emotional wellbeing in the community, with the assistance of a team of beginning Indigenous researchers. Over 100,000 hours of community education were delivered through this program. 2. The Gomeroi gaaynggal cohort work has involved the recruitment and retention of a prospective longitudinal cohort of Indigenous women from pregnancy through until the infants are 10 years of age highlighting her expertise in working with Indigenous families during their antenatal and early childhood years. The importance of maternal health for this population is a critical priority to improving the life-long health of the Indigenous communities of Australia.

Delineation of osteal macrophage function in the bone microenvironment: dual roles in bone dynamics and stem cell niches.

Bone and joint diseases are a national and international health and research priority costing the Australian health system over $10 billion annually. The bony skeleton is a dynamic metabolically active tissue that is continuously remodelled and repaired to maintain calcium homeostasis and structural integrity. The microenvironment at the inner surface of long bones (endosteum), including the bone matrix and associated bone lining cells, is crucial to the dynamic processes of bone modelling and remodelling. I have recently characterized 'osteomacs' as a resident tissue macrophage population within bone lining tissues and have shown that they promote bone mineralization in vitro and are necessary for the maintenance of bone forming osteoblasts in vivo. Thus osteomacs are cellular constituents of endosteal niches and play an osteoblast-support function in this microenvironment. We are investigating the unique phenotype and expression profile (mRNA and protein) of osteomacs in order to fully delineate their functional potential in bone dynamics.

Recently it has been shown that the endosteal environment is also essential for the maintenance of mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) and haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) niches. Osteoblasts need to be present on the bone surface to ensure HSC maintenance in the endosteal niche. Therefore we hypothesised that osteomacs, as a consequence of their presence in the niche and osteoblast support-function, contribute both indirectly and directly to the generation of this stem cell nursery. We have shown that loss of osteomacs and subsequently osteoblasts occurs during G-CSF induced HSC mobilization. Importantly, in vivo depletion of osteomacs (using transgenic Mafia mice) also causes marked egress of HSC from bone marrow into the blood and spleen. These data provide compelling support that osteomacs are required for maintenance of osteoblast bone forming surfaces and provide caretaker support for the endosteal stem cell niches.

My research team has a number of projects that aim to understand the cellular architecture of the endosteal stem cell niches and the role of osteomacs in this environment. This is an essential step toward enhancing clinical HSC mobilization options in order to improve bone marrow transplantation outcomes in multiple myeloma and lymphoma and also ensuring that the promise of MSC therapy is translated into a clinical reality.

Dr Md Sazedur Rahman is a Public Health researcher and statistician with eight years of experience across cardiovascular disease, stroke rehabilitation, diabetes, mental health, nutrition, and healthcare utilisation. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Queensland on the NHMRC-funded Safer Hospitals program, where he analyses large linked administrative datasets to evaluate the safety, effectiveness, and resource use of Australian hospitals. Dr Rahman completed his PhD in Public Health at the University of Technology Sydney (2025), examining self-management strategies in stroke rehabilitation using linked longitudinal data. Since 2020, he has authored more than 20 peer-reviewed publications. He collaborates with clinicians and policy stakeholders to translate analytics into actionable insights that inform evidence-based policy, optimise care delivery, and reduce health inequities.

Dewan Rahman is a Senior Lecturer in Finance at UQ Business School. He teaches Asset Pricing, Finance, and Investment and Portfolio Management across undergraduate and postgraduate programs. He finds teaching highly rewarding and values the opportunity to engage with students. He is also actively involved in supervising higher degree research (PhD) students and is currently accepting new students.

Dewan’s research focuses primarily on insider trading, corporate finance, corporate governance, and corporate disclosure. He has presented his work at leading conferences, including the American Finance Association Annual Meeting, the Australasian Finance & Banking Conference, the AFAANZ Annual Conference, and the New Zealand Finance Meeting, among others. His research has been published in high-quality academic journals such as the Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, European Accounting Review, and Accounting and Business Research. He was awarded the 2020 ECR Excellence in Research Award from UQ Business School.

His research on insider trading has received significant media attention, with coverage syndicated across 10 outlets, including The Conversation and Business News Australia, and featured in UQ Business School’s industry research magazine, Momentum. In 2024-2025, he was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship and spent four months undertaking collaborative research at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He currently serves as one of the Finance PhD Coordinators and is a founding member of the UQ CALD HDR Forum. He is also a member of UQ Business School’s Digital Finance Research Hub. Overall, his research, engagement, and leadership profile has strengthened through high-quality publications, competitive grant success, the Australian-American Fulbright Professional Scholarship, growing international collaboration, and increasing external recognition.

Dewan holds a PhD in Finance (with Endeavour Scholarship) from the University of Queensland, MSc in Finance (with Commonwealth Scholarship) from the University of Strathclyde, and BBA (Finance) and MBA (Finance) from the University of Dhaka.

Dr Anjana Rai is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian Women and Girls' Health Research Centre, School of Public Health. She currently supports two longitudinal studies: the IVF support study in Australia, and The Adolescent Menstrual Experiences and Health Cohort (AMEHC) in Bangladesh. Dr Rai was awarded her PhD in Public Health (2025) by Queensland University of Technology. Her doctoral research explored the nexus of adolescent marriage, agency, and nutrition, examining how early-life transitions shape diets and nutritional outcomes, using mixed-methods.

Her expertise lies in improving maternal, child, and adolescent health and nutrition, drawing on social science theories and longitudinal approaches and contributes to research in South Asia and Australia. She consulted for International Food Policy Research Institute on prevention of childhood wasting to inform the UN JUNIPr initiative. In her previous roles with the World Health Organisation, the World Food Programme, the World Bank, and Nepal’s Department of Health Services, she helped develop public health policies and programmes. She holds a PhD, MSc and a Bachelor in Public Health and is open to supervising future higher degree research students.

Research interests: Women's health, Preconception health, Adolescent health, Child health, Diets, Nutrition and Growth, Social determinants, Equity, Co-design, Longitudinal and Life-course approaches

Dr Mojtaba Rajabi has over 15 years of extensive experience in crustal stress analysis, geomechanics, geomechanical-numerical modelling and petrophysics. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the University of Adelaide in 2017. Dr Rajabi has worked on the geomechanical analyses of >30 sedimentary basins from across the world including Australia, New Zealand, Middle East, Mozambique, Iceland and Western Mediterranean. Since 2012, Dr Rajabi has worked on the Australian and World Stress Map projects, and currently is the Deputy-Head of the World Stress Map project. Dr Rajabi has received over 15 prestigious awards and prizes for his research including the ARC-DECRA Award, the Australian SEG Early Achievement Award, EAGE Louis Cagniard Award, EGU TS Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award, the Royal Society of South Australia's H.G. Andrewartha Medal, and the International Lithosphere Program’s Flinn-Hart Award.

Dr. Foad Raji is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Queensland (UQ). Within UQ’s Minerals and Energy Resources Processing group, he focuses on improving mineral and gold recovery in flotation processes. His research explores solution chemistry, surface interactions, and electrochemistry to develop eco-friendly biopolymer depressants, enhancing copper-gold ore extraction efficiency. Using first-principles tools like Density Functional Theory (DFT), he investigates interfacial phenomena at the molecular level, advancing sustainable technologies for mineral processing and environmental remediation.

Aleksandar D. Rakić leads the Photonics and Microwave Engineering group at The University of Queensland focusing on the development of technologies for sensing and imaging across the electromagnetic spectrum including microwave, terahertz wave and optical systems.

Professor Rakić’s research focuses on the principles of laser feedback interferometry with semiconductor lasers, and on the application of these principles to imaging and sensing. Rakić group pioneered the development of several world’s first laser-feedback interferometric sensors including systems based on monolithic Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser arrays (VCSELs), blue-green lasers, terahertz quantum cascade lasers and mid-infrared interband cascade lasers.

His current focus is on the development of sensing and imaging systems exploiting the THz spectrum for applications from security and defence to in vivo biomedical imaging. His other principal contributions relate to the design and characterization of surface-emitting optoelectronic devices (VCSELs and light emitting diodes) and modelling of optical materials.

Professor Ralph obtained a BSc Hons from Macquarie University in 1989 and a PhD in Physics from The Australian National University in 1993. He has held three Australian Research Council Fellowships - Postdoctoral, QEII and Professorial. He is currently Node Director for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of Queensland.

Dr Ramanan is a Specialist in Intensive Care Medicine. His main research interests are in critical care epidemiology, long-term outcomes of critical illness, methodological aspects of clinical research and database/registry research.

Dr. Markus Rambach's research interests are in the field of quantum optics, especially on single photon sources to create photonic qubits and qudits.

Markus was born and raised in a small alpine town in Austria, before doing his BSc and MSc at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). He did his undergrad in Physics, before completing an MSc in experimental quantum physics in the prestigious group of Pro. Rainer Blatt. Here, is where he met a young renegade Brit who had just completed his PhD in the research group of Prof. Andrew White at the University of Queensland. Inspired by the stories, Markus decided to have a look for himself and moved to Brisbane, where he completed his PhD with Andrew in 2017. After a short intermezzo for a Postdoc in Scotland, he moved back to Brisbane 2019 and has been a research fellow at UQ ever since. Markus' research interests are in the weird but beautiful world of quantum physics, where he is investigating ways to make the upcoming quantum internet a reality. Over the years he has worked with verious single photon platforms and used them for quantum information experiments. Recently he changed gear and is now investigating the infinitely-sized space of higher-dimensional quantum systems, so-called qudits.

Markus enjoys community engagement, be it as chair of the SMP Early and Mid-Career Academics Committee or as a member of the EQUS Public Engagement Committee. He particular likes the sparks in people's eyes when they start to understand a concept or idea.

Research interests include: applied econometrics, time series econometrics, state-space models and spatial time series models. Has published in journals that include the Journal of Econometrics, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Applied Econometrics.

Current research projects are in: spatial time series models with applications to modelling housing and land prices, transport demand, international comparisons and sectoral productivity