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Dr. Susannah Tye joined the Queensland Brain Institute in 2017 and has established a research program within the Asia Pacific Centre for Neuromodulation (QLD, Australia). Before returning to Australia, Dr. Tye directed the Translational Neuroscience Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic (2012-2017). While there she led efforts to develop brain stimulation devices (for rodents and humans) that can quantify neural activity and neurotransmitter dynamics in the living brain. This body of work now forms the basis of the neuropsychiatric arm of the Mayo Clinic’s Deep Brain Stimulation Consortium. Her specific research expertise are in utilising voltammetric (electrochemical) recording techniques to monitor rapid, synaptic neurotransmission in the living brain.

Dr. Tye has over ten years of experience studying neuromodulation in preclinical rodent models and human patients. Her long-term goal is to bridge preclinical and clinical studies to maximise translational impact, specifically in terms of improving patient outcomes for those with severe refractory psychiatric illness. Towards this end, she maintains many international collaborations with both clinical and basic science researchers. Dr. Tye also has a longstanding interest in mentoring young scientists to help them expand their skills in preclinical and basic science research and achieve a successful research career.

Professor Bruno van Swinderen received his PhD in Evolutionary and Population Biology in 1998 from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. His graduate work was on general anesthesia in a Caenorhabditis elegans model, applying both quantitative genetics and molecular genetic approaches. For his postdoc at The Neurosciences Institute (NSI) in San Diego, California (1999-2003), he switched to Drosophila melanogaster to develop methods of studying perception in the fruit-fly model. He ran a lab at NSI from 2003 to late 2007.

Professor van Swinderen established a new laboratory at the Queensland Brain Institute in February 2008.

Bruno van Swinderen's group use Drosophila as a genetic model system to study mechanisms of perception in the brain and are interested in three phenomena: selective attention, sleep, and general anesthesia. Their focus is on visual perception and how it is affected by these different arousal states. Their current effort is in understanding how sleep regulates selective attention and predictive processing. Toward this goal, they use various novel visual paradigms in a Drosophila molecular genetics context. The lab is also focussed on understanding presynaptic mechamisms of general anaesthesia, with a view to uncovering new strategies to improve recovery from this common medical procedure.

Visscher joined the University of Queensland in 2011, where he is Professor of Quantitative Genetics. He is a Laureate Fellow of the Australian Research Council. Visscher was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2010, a Fellow of the Royal Society (London) in 2018 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.

Visscher’s research is about genetic variation for complex traits (including quantitative traits and disease) in populations, with the broad aim to understand and quantify the causes and consequences of human trait variation.

Prof Peter Visscher, Prof Naomi Wray and Prof Jian Yang together comprise the Executive Team of the Program in Complex Trait Genomics (PCTG). PCTG comprises a critical mass of more than 30 post-doctoral researchers plus research assistants and students, all supported by external grant funding. Their skills lie in the ability to develop and apply statistical methods within the framework of quantitative, population and statistical genetics and to use theory to understand and predict results from data analyses. They play leading roles in the international research consortia. The focus of current research activities is in the detection and fine-mapping of loci underlying complex traits (including common disease), based upon theoretical studies and applications of methods to large datasets, in population genetics studies using theoretical approaches and high-density genetic marker data, and in systems genomics studies.

Dr T. Thang Vo-Doan is a Lecturer of the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering at the University of Queensland. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Biology I, University of Freiburg, Germany (2019-2023). He was also a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore (2016-2018). He was awarded his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, NTU in 2016. He received his M.Eng. degree in Manufacturing Engineering and B.Eng. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Vietnam in 2010 and 2008 respectively. He was awarded the prestigious Human Frontier Science Program Cross-disciplinary Fellowship (2019-2022).

He directs the UQ Biorobotics lab after joining in the University of Queensland. Current research activities of the lab focus on insect-machine hybrid robots, bio-inspired robotics, insect structures and functions, biomechanics, fast lock-on tracking, and brain imaging in untethered insects.

Overview

Professor Waldemar Vollmer is a microbiologist working on the structure and biogenesis of the bacterial cell wall in various model bacteria and a range of pathogenic and environmental bacteria. He is particularly interested in how bacteria enlarge their cell wall when they grow and divide, and how antibiotics inhibit cell wall synthesis to kill bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global problem that is predicted to claim 10 million lives annually by the year 2050 if no new antibiotics are developed. Currently the pipeline of antibiotic development is almost empty and mostly limited to slightly modified versions to existing antibiotics. Professor Vollmer addresses the problem of AMR by generating tailored assays for the development of novel antibiotics that target AMR bacteria.

Collaborations: Professor Vollmer collaborates world-wide with more than 50 researchers at top national and international institutions on cell wall topics in over 30 different bacteria. These topics include: structure and composition of the cell wall and its role in maintaining cell morphology; molecular mechanisms of cell envelope biogenesis; role of new cell wall modifying enzymes in the interaction of pathogenic bacteria with components of the immune system; mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and targeting of cell wall biogenesis by new antibiotics.

Funding and Publications: Professor Vollmer has been awarded more than $15 million funding from research councils and charities in Germany, UK, Europe and USA. He has published more than 200 articles in international journals and has been recognised as a Highly Cited Researcher in Microbiology.

Honours and Awards: Professor Vollmer has been elected to Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2014) and European Academy of Microbiology (2018). He received the annual Academic Distinction Awards from the Vice Chancellor of Newcastle University (2014), has been awarded a Distinguished Scientist Visiting Scholarships at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel, 2012) and a Visiting Professorship at the University of Cagliari (Italy, 2015), and won a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (2014). He has co-organised the 2018 Gordon Conference (GRC) "Bacterial Cell Surfaces" (Mt Snow, USA) and the 2016 EMBO Workshop "Bacterial Cell Division: Orchestrating the Ring Cycle" (Prague, Czech Republic).

Short Biography: Prof Waldemar Vollmer has studied chemistry at the University of Applied Sciences in Reutlingen (Germany) and University of Basel (Switzerland). In 1998 he obtained a PhD degree (Dr.rer.nat.) from the University of Tübingen (Germany) for his work on cell wall synthesis in the model bacterium Escherichia coli undertaken at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. During his postdoctoral studies at the Rockefeller University (New York, USA) he discovered novel cell wall enzymes that are crucial for the virulence of the pathogenic bacterium Streptococcus pneumoiae. In 2003 he was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Tübingen and moved 2007 to the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology at Newcastle University (UK), where he worked as Professor of Bacterial Biochemistry on various bacterial cell wall topics in a range of different bacteria. Since April 2023 he is Professorial Research Fellow and Group Leader at the Centre for Superbug Solutions, Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at the University of Queensland.

Professor Brandon Wainwright AM is Co-Director of the Children’s Brain Cancer Centre and leads a laboratory within the UQ Diamantina Institute focused on understanding the genetic pathways behind medulloblastoma, a type of brain tumour that occurs predominantly in children. He is Chair of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Australia, Chair of the Advisory Board of the Robinson Research Institute and Chair of the Board of the South Australian Immunogenomics Cancer Institute (SAIGENCI), and serves on the boards the Australian Genome Research Facility as well as several national and international scientific review committees, including the MRFF Brain Tumour Roadmap Committee.

Professor Wainwright completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at The University of Adelaide, after which he secured a postdoctoral fellowship with St Mary's Hospital at Imperial College London. During his six years at Imperial he worked on the first human genome project and also became a Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellow. He returned to Australia in 1990 to join UQ's Centre for Molecular and Cellular Biology (now IMB) and led the Institute for Molecular Biology until 2019.

Professor Wainwright is a geneticist, renowned for discovering the genetic pathway that causes most human cancer. He is skilled in molecular genetics, where he is using genetic approaches to dig through DNA and find the genes that cause disease. He commenced using these skills to locate the cystic fibrosis gene, but it was when isolating a gene responsible for a rare form of brain cancer called Medulloblastoma, that he discovered the role of the ‘Hedgehog Pathway' in common human cancer.

Dr Tara Walker is a Senior Research Associate at the Queensland Brain Institute. Dr Walker's group is investigating the mechanisms governing the lifelong production of neurons in the adult brain (adult neurogenesis). Tara studied Biotechnology as an undergraduate at the Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia), before carrying out her PhD in the field of Plant Biotechnology. In 2003 she made the transition to neuroscience, joining the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) and the group of Professor Perry Bartlett. Here she became interested in the field of adult hippocampal neurogenesis, particularly in its activity-dependent regulation. In 2010, she joined the group of Professor Gerd Kempermann at the Center for Regenerative Therapies in Dresden, Germany, where she was awarded a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship in 2011. In July 2018 she returned to QBI to take up a position in the newly developed Centre for Restorative Neurosciences as a Senior Research Associate, where she will apply her knowledge of neural stem cell biology to stroke research.

My research interests are centred around the structure and function of venom and silk polypeptides produced by arthropods, and their use in biotechnology and medicine. I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the King laboratory in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, the University of Queensland, Australia. Currently, I am investigating the composition, function and evolution of neglected insect venoms produced by assassin bugs (Hemiptera: Reduviidae), robber flies (Diptera: Asilidae) and nettle caterpillars (Lepidoptera: Limacodidae).

Dr Adam Walker received his BSc(Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of Tasmania, and PhD in Neuroscience from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms of motor neuron disease (MND). He undertook a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Virginia Lee at the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, University of Pennsylvania (2011-2015), developing new transgenic TDP-43 mouse models of disease. Dr Walker was previously an NHMRC CJ Martin Overseas Biomedical Research Fellow and was awarded an NHMRC RD Wright Career Development Fellowship (2018-2022), to continue his research on neurodegenerative diseases. His research has been supported by fellowships and project grants from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian National Foundation for Medical Research and Innovation, Dementia Australia, Motor Neuron Disease Research Institute of Australia, MonSTaR Foundation and the Cure for MND Foundation.

Dr Haolu Wang currently is a Medical Registrar and Basic Physician Trainee with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians - The Prince Charles Hospital and Redcliffe Hospital (Northside) Rotation. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow in the joint liver cancer research program of Frazer Institute, The University of Queensland and Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation. Dr Wang received his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery qualifications from Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. He was awarded his PhD in Clinical Medicine from The University of Queensland. Dr Wang has worked as a Medical Officer at Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and as a Researcher Officer at Frazer Institute, The University of Queensland.

Dr Wang has authored over 30 publications of clinical and translational research in liver diseases, including Hepatology, Theranostics, Int J Cancer, J Exp Clin Cancer Res and Pharmacol Ther. His standing in this field is reflected by awards from Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, United European Gastroenterology, European Microscopy Congress, The University of Queensland, Frazer Family Foundation and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Dr. Wang completed her MPhil study in the University of Queensland (UQ) in 2016 and PhD study in UQ in October 2020. As an early career researcher, Dr.Wang has demonstrated a high impact track record relative to opportunity with award of Dean's award for Excellence in Higher Degree Research (2016), the high proportion (41%) of first-authored publications, 28% of which in the top 10% most cited publications worldwide (Scopus 24/03/2021). She has been actively engaged in a number of professional activities in the research fields, including RHD student supervision, assessment for the master research projects (BIOX7021), talks at national and international conferences (The Australian Colloid and Interface Symposium Brisbane hub, 2021; The Australasian Society for Stem Cell Research ECR Symposium, 2021; BioNano Innovation, 2020) and conference organization (The Australian Colloid and Interface Symposium Brisbane hub, 2021).

Andrew Ward is an ARC Industry Fellow at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology (ACWEB), at The University of Queensland. He holds a PhD degree from the School of Chemical Engineering (The University of Adelaide) and his thesis focused on the optimisation of halophilic anaerobic digestion of algal biomass. At ACWEB projects he has worked on include Nutrient recovery via electrodialysis and Anammox for both domestic wastewater and agricultural wastewater treatment. He previously received an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship to investigate the use of algae and bacterial aggregated flocs for the remediation of wastewater. Andrew has just received and ARC Industry Fellowship to investigate the use of microalgae and its role in energy and nutrient recovery from a circular economy perspective. Andrew has significant industrial experience working with large water utilities and industry partners scaling up research to pilot and demonstration scale. Andrew is currently lead investigator and manages Urban Utilities wastewater microalgae research program.

Dr Nicole Warrington is a NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the University of Queensland Institute for Molecular Bioscience. She has a strong background in statistical genetics and has been actively working towards understanding the genetic determinants of early life growth. Dr Warrington studied a Bachelor of Science at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, majoring in Mathematical Statistics and Psychology. She then completed an honours degree at The University of Western Australia, where she developed a keen interest for genetics, and was subsequently awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award to complete her PhD in statistical genetics and life-course epidemiology. During her PhD she spent time at the University of Toronto to gain experience in statistical modelling methods for longitudinal growth trajectories and conducted the first genome-wide association study of longitudinal growth trajectories over childhood. After completing her PhD, Dr Warrington started at the University of Queensland and focused on using genetics to inform about the relationship between birth weight and cardio-metabolic diseases in later life. She pioneered a new statistical method to partition genetic effects on birth weight into maternal and fetal components, and combined this method with a causal modelling approach, Mendelian randomization. This method was instrumental in demonstrating the relationship between birth weight and adult hypertension is driven by genetic effects, over-turning 30 years of research into the effects of intrauterine programming. More recently, her research focus has broadened to determine whether rapid weight growth across early life, including fetal development, childhood and adolescence, causally increases risk of cardio-metabolic disease and in doing so, hopes to identify optimal times across the life-course where interventions could reduce the incidence of cardio-metabolic diseases.

James is an applied conservation scientist and bioegeographer working at the interface between ecology, policy and management to improve outcomes for biodiversity. He has a particular interest in understanding how humanity influences landscape and the climate, and what this means for biodiversity and ecosystem service outcomes, and the implications of this for environmental policy setting and management.

As a Professor of Conservation Science at The University of Queensland, he leads two research groups. The Green Fire Science research group (www.greenfirescience.com) mission is to do applied research that is linked directly to the practice of large-scale conservation and the Research and Recovery of Endangered Species (https://raresgroup.com.au) mission is to focus on Australia's rarest, least studied species to try and work out their needs and work with those on-ground practioners to try and save them.

James has been passionate conservation for decades. As a Rhodes Scholar, James undertook his PhD research studying in Madagascar, trying to come up with conservation plans to save endemic bird species inhabiting the country’s remaining littoral forest. Since then he has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and reports on conservation related matters, ranging from assessing the impacts of climate change on species to mapping the effectiveness of protected areas on biodiversity conservation outcomes globally. He has served on the International Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Data and Knowledge Task Force, and is a Research Fellow for the United Nation’s Environment Program, a Senior Technical expert for the United Nations Development Program’s Global Programme on Nature for Development, and was the founding chair of the International Union for Nature Conservation Climate Change Specialist Group. James sits on the scientific committees of BirdLife Australia and SUBAC. James was global president of the Society for Conservation Biology in 2015-17.

I am also an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science.

I am a basic science researcher trained in molecular and cell biology, with expertise in transdisciplinary research. My primary focus is investigating the circadian aspects of (patho-) physiology, specifically in relation to the liver. I am particularly interested in understanding how circadian, endocrine, and metabolic pathways work together to maintain homeostasis, as well as how disruptions in these pathways can contribute to pathological conditions.

Following the completion of my PhD at Heidelberg University in Germany in 2013, I pursued post-doctoral studies as a Marie-Curie Fellow at Birmingham University (UK) and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland). During this time, I utilized omics-approaches to elucidate the metabolic changes caused by impaired mitochondrial glucocorticoid biosynthesis and adrenal insufficiency. Additionally, I investigated the relationship between mitochondrial function and stress-induced depression. In order to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying rhythmic expression of metabolic genes, I also developed tools that facilitate the study of how circadian clock components and glucocorticoids cooperatively drive these processes.

In 2019, I have joined the Physiology of Circadian Rhythms laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, to investigate the role of the circadian clock and chronodisruption in metabolism and liver disease.

Acid soil, Aluminium toxicity, soil acidity, rhizosphere, plant roots, root growth, plant cell wall, nutrient uptake, plant nutrition

Having completed my B.Sc. majoring in Biochemistry, Microbiology and Chemistry, I completed my M.Sc. (Agric) in Horticultural Science. After completing a PhD on the effect of heavy metals and aluminium on plant root biochemistry, I have worked for various plant biotechnology companies, focussing on genetic engineering of crops, in-vitro growth, propagation systems and salinity tolerant tree crops. After rejoining the University, I have been involved in minesite rehabilitation, focussing on plant-soil-water relationships. I have completed and ARC funded research on Al toxicity, focussing on the hydrolysis of Al in plant roots. I am currently researching the effect of coal seam water application and the movement of salts in soils. I am also teaching the introductory Soil Science course to undergraduate students.