Find an expert

Bio: Dr. Severine van Bommel is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland's School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability. With a keen interest in rural development and agricultural extension, her research focuses on understanding the role of experts and expertise in orchestrating effective governance performances for systemic transformation of natural resource dilemmas and competing claims. Through an interpretive lens, her research aims to support experts in communicating and collaborating with farmers and communities in situations of social learning, multi-stakeholder partnerships, farmer field schools, community-based NRM or co-inquiry and co-design.

Research Interests:

• Rural development
• Agricultural extension
• Sustainable development
• Indigenous engagement
• Environmental credentials verification

Current Projects:

- the co-design of a virtual platform for verifying environmental credentials for Australian beef producers - developing indigenous engagement methods (storian) for Australian researchers working with Ni-Vanuatu livestock farmers - making visible and challenging gender norms in transdisciplinary research and development practice - facilitating more-than-human participatory research and practice

Publications: Dr. van Bommel has contributed to significant works in her field, including:

• "Rural Development for Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems: Putting Communities First" (Palgrave)
• "Forest and Nature Governance: A Practice-Based Approach" (Springer)
• "Forest-People Interfaces" (Wageningen Academic Publishers)

Her research contributions have been published in prestigious journals and presented at international conferences such as IPA, MOPAN, IFSA, and APEN.

Teaching: In addition to her research, Dr. van Bommel teaches courses on:

• Leadership in rural industries (MSc)
• Effective stakeholder engagement (MSc)
• Human-wildlife interactions (MSc and BSc)

Mentorship and Community Engagement: Dr. van Bommel is dedicated to mentoring early career researchers interested in interpretive methods within the APSA mentoring program. She also runs an International Virtual Community of Practice for Interpretive Practitioners, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange in the field.

Associate Professor Elske van de Fliert is the Director of the Centre for Communication and Social Change. She also convenes the Communication for Social Change plan of the Master of Communication program. She obtained a PhD in Communication & Innovation in 1993 from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. She joined the UQ School of Journalism and Communication (now School of Communication and Arts) in July 2006. Prior to this, Elske worked for two decades in research, development and teaching positions in Indonesia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, with work also across China, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines and Kyrgyzstan.

Elske’s research interests include participatory development communication, facilitation of transdisciplinary research for sustainable development, and impact assessment of social change processes. Over the years at UQ, she has been conducting research projects in Indonesia, Timor Leste, Philippines and Mongolia. She has published widely on a range of topics related to participatory research and communication in sustainable rural development.

Deborah van der Plaat is a Senior Research Fellow with the School of Architecture, The University of Queensland. She was formerly a Senior Research Fellow and Manager of the Architecture Theory Criticism History Research Centre (ATCH), UQ (2015-2019). Her research examines the architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and its intersection with theories of artistic agency, climate, environment and race. Writing histories of Queensland architecture is also a focus within her work and, with John Macarthur, she continues to develop and expand the Digital Archive of Queensland Architecture (DAQA, launched in 2014, https://qldarch.net/)

Her most research outputs include:

• [edited book] Karl Langer: Modern Architect and Migrant in Tropical Australia (with John Macarthur, London: Bloomsbury, 2022), https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/karl-langer-9781350068117/
• [edited book] Light, Space, Place: the architecture of Robin Gibson (with Lloyd Jones, Melbourne: URO Publications, 2022), https://uropublications.com/collections/books-from-uro-publications/products/light-space-place-architecture-robin-gibson
• [book chapter] "Casting Shadows and Seeking Shade," with Nicole Sully in Ryan, Daniel J., Ferng, Jennifer and L'Heureux, Erik G. Drawing Climate: Visualising Invisible Elements of Architecture. Berlin, Boston: Birkhäuser, 2022, pp. 120-149, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035623611
• [book chapter] "Wireless Architecture: Robert Percy Cummings Early Radio Talks," with John Macarthur in E. Couchez, & Heynickx, R. (Eds.). Architectural Education Through Materiality: Pedagogies of 20th Century Design (1st ed.) London: Routledge, 2022, 221-234, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003201205-17
• [book chapter ] "Alternative Facts: Towards a Theorization of Oral History in Architecture," with Janina Gosseye and Naomi Stead In Architecture Thinking across Boundaries: Knowledge Transfers since the 1960s, edited by Rajesh Heynickx, Ricardo Costa Agarez and Elke Couchez, 136–148. 136–148. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021, http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350153202.ch-008.
• [journal paper] “Comfort in Australia’s unproductive North and the attendant anxiety of tropical cyclones”, ABE Journal, March 2021 URL: http://journals.openedition.org/abe/9243; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.9243
• [International conference paper] ‘Unrecognised actors and new networks. Teaching Tropical Architecture in mid-twentieth century Australia,’ in Cosmopolitan Others, EAHN2021, 6th International Conference, Edinburgh 2021, June 4, 2021.
• [panel discussion] Queensland Cultural Centre: Then, Now and New. Panel discussion between Michael Rayner, Ruth Woods and Dr Deborah van der Plaat and Lloyd Jones (moderator). Hosted by Queensland State Archives on Saturday March 13th, 2021 as part of the Asia Pacific Architecture Festival. https://vimeo.com/524021925

With John Macarthur, Jane Hunter, Andrew Wilson and industry partners State Library of Queensland, Conrad Gargett Architecture, Bligh Voller Nield, Wilson Architects and Riddel Architecture, Plaat wrote the successful Australian Research Council Linkage application "Architectural Practice in Post-war Queensland: Building and Interpreting an Oral History Archive" (2011-2013). This project resulted in the first comphrensive history on Queensland modernism and outputs included: a major exhibition, Hot Modernism: Building Modern Queensland 1945-1975 (State Library of Queensland, July- October 2014 curated with Janina Gosseye, Kevin Wilson and Gavin Bannerman); the creation and ongoing development of the Digital Archive of Qlueensland Architecture qldarch.net; and a book, Hot Modernism: Queensland Architecture 1945-1975 (London: Artifice Press, 2015 co-edited with John Macarthur, Janina Gosseye and Andrew Wilson). In 2017, the project was awarded the John Herbert Memorial Award and the Gold Heritage Award, Interpretation and Promotion by the National Trust of Australia, Queensland Branch. See also: http://www.uq.edu.au/research/impact/stories/hot-modernism-cool-resource/

From 2009-2011 Plaat was the recipient of the UQ Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women to work on her nominated project, "Tropical environments and Queensland architecture (1850-1914): building historical understandings of the culture of architecture and climate change." This project resulted in a symposium titled Architecture at the Ragged Edge of Empire: Race, Taste and Place and the Colonial Context (State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, 27-28 June, 2013) and a series of papers which explore the insection of architecture, climate and race in Queensland architecture. This research is ongoing.

Plaat has edited 5 books including: Skyplane: What effect do towers have on urbanism, sustainability, the workplace and historic city centres? (with Richard Francis Jones, Lawrence Nield, Xing Ruan, Sydney: UNSW Press 2009); Hot Modernism: Queensland Architecture 1945-1975 (with John Macarthur, Janina Gosseye and Andrew Wilson, London: Artifice 2015); Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research (with Janina Gosseye and Naomi Stead, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2019); Karl Langer: Modern Architect and Migrant in Tropical Australia (with John Macarthur, London: Bloomsbury, 2022) and Light, Space, Place: the architecture of Robin Gibson (with Lloyd Jones, Melbourne: URO Publications, 2022). From 2010 to 2014 she was editor, with Paul Walker and Julia Gatley, of Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand. She has also published extensively in national and international journals.

Awards

American Society of Environmental Historians (ASEH) Travel Award 2019.

Graham Foundation Grant 2018.

John Herbert Memorial Award for the Most Outstanding Nomination, Hot Modernism: Exhibition, Digital Archive and Book, National Trust, Queensland, 2017.

Gold Heritage Award, Interpretation and Promotion, Hot Modernism: Exhibition, Digital Archive and Book, National Trust, Queensland, 2017.

Annual Conference Senior Scholar Fellowship, Society of Architectural Historians 2013.

Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women (University of Queensland) 2009-2012.

Memberships

Member, Society of Architectural Historians (SAH)

Member, European Architectural History Network (EAHN)

Member, the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA)

Member, COST Action ISO904 European Architecture Beyond Europe

Member, Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ)

Member, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ)

Dr Anton Van Der Vegt is an Advanced QLD Industry Research Fellow with the Centre for Health Services Research at UQ Faculty of Medicine. He trained as a Mechanical Engineer and Computer Scientist at University of Sydney and has worked across Australia, Europe, the US and India, designing, developing and implementing sophisticated software programs for multi-nationals as well as co-authoring two US patents. Having moved to England in 2001, he worked with several technology firms and published a book to support managers in their efforts to transform their organisations through IT. In 2005 he became the Director of Operations for a public Healthcare IT company, with budget responsibility over 100 professional staff performing electronic medical record system implementation across UK hospitals. In 2020 he gained a PhD through The University of Queensland on the application of AI with information retrieval to support clinical decision making. Since then, he has architected and managed two collaboratory projects with Queensland Health to support AI experimentation with health data. Most recently, he was awarded an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship to pursue collaboratory research with Queensland Health to develop and implement AI algorithms to identify patients at risk of deterioration in hospital general wards. He is also a co-investigator on a Queensland Health sepsis prediction project.

Shanice Van Haeften is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, University of Queensland. Her research harnesses cutting-edge technologies, including UAV imagery, to unravel the physiological mechanisms and genotype-by-environment interactions underpinning crop yield productivity and stability.Currently, Shanice is conducting research to accelerate the development of heat-tolerant chickpea varieties for Australian growers through novel phenotyping and genomic approaches. This work is part of the Grains Research and Development Corporation funded project "Fast tracking deployment of chickpea heat tolerance”, led by Dr Millicent Smith. Driven by a passion for global food security, Shanice’s research extends beyond Australian agriculture. She is committed to applying her expertise in crop improvement and environmental adaptation to international development contexts, aiming to be a part of solutions that can support the empowerment communities worldwide with sustainable and resilient agricultural systems.

Dr Nameer van Oosterom holds a Bachelor of Pharmacy with First-class Honours and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Queensland, School of Pharmacy. His research focuses on venous thromboembolisms, drug individualization, antiplatelets, anticoagulants, and aspirin resistance. Nameer is a registered pharmacist and works at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane.

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.

Professor André Van Zundert is the Professor and Chair of Anaesthesiology at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He is the Chair of RBWH 'Burns, Trauma, Critical Care and Research Centre'.

Professor André van Zundert is also the Chair of The University of Queensland 'Centre for Excellence & Innovation in Anaesthesia'. His research interest is in airway management, regional anaesthesia and obstetrics, for which he has received international recognition. He has been greatly acknowledged for his contributions to: 1) Pain Relief in Childbirth (the suggested technique is still practiced all over the world in the labour ward); 2) providing safe and effective airway management using videolaryngoscopy and videolaryngeal mask airways; and 3) Pain therapy. He authored three major standard textbooks in anaesthesia.

Honorary Professor at Queensland Brain Institute. About 400 million general anaesthesia procedures are performed annually worldwide. While anaesthesia is extremely safe, it remains largely unknown why recovery can be delayed or problematic in some patients, especially in elderly people and in those with pre-existing neurological decline. Currently, there are no treatments available to counteract or speed up anaesthesia recovery, which still remains an entirely passive process. Our inability to counteract general anaesthesia has serious secondary consequences, such as increased length of hospital stay, and ongoing complications, including postoperative cognitive dysfunction. Professor van Zundert's interest in promoting research in this area prompted collaboration with the van Swinderen Lab at Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) and was facilitated by his joining as an Honorary Professor. Professor van Zundert’s research focus at QBI is centred on uncovering anaesthesia reversal agents, targeting pre-and post-synaptic neurotransmission receptors.

Luigi Vandi is the Co-Deputy Director for the Centre for Advanced Materials Processing and Manufacturing (AMPAM) and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering. He conducts research in materials science, ranging from advanced manufacturing, in-life performance and end-of life conversion to higher value products. He obtained his PhD on hybrid materials from The University of Queensland, and his MSc from the National Polytechnic Institute of Lorraine in France.

His translational research activities have a strong focus on industry relevant projects. His experience in high-performance composites manufacturing for automotive and aerospace applications, includes working at Ferrari F1 Team in Italy, where he was responsible for the manufacture of carbon fibre suspensions and gearbox of the F1 car. In Australia, he played a key role in developing a patented technology as part of a collaborative project with Airbus and CRC-ACS. He is currently responsible for AMPAM’s sustainability theme and leads research in ‘Biocomposites & Circular Economy’. He has secured over $9 million of funding in this field and delivered high impact sustainable solutions. He is the first author of 4 active patents, in the fields of advanced manufacturing, biocomposites and biopolymers, including the development of novel sustainable biocomposite materials that are marine biodegradable biopolymer.

Luigi is driven by solution-based research, and in particular bringing latest innovations in materials science to the benefits of a future circular economy. His goal is to provide an expertise at the crossover between materials science and sustainable development to address the challenges of today’s linear economy.

Luigi lectured 4th year Aerospace Composites (course AERO4300), and 2nd year Engineering Investigation & Statistical Analysis (course CHEE2010)

Eric Vanman is a Professor at the University of Queensland's School of Psychology in Australia. He earned his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1994. Following that, he served as a post-doctoral fellow specialising in cognitive and behavioural neuroscience at USC, then spent a year as a research scientist in the Environmental Psychophysiology Laboratory at Texas A&M. He also held short-term positions at Emory University before being appointed an Assistant Professor at Georgia State University in 2000, where he taught until 2007. He then transitioned from Georgia State as an Associate Professor to his current role. His research centres on the social neuroscience of emotion and intergroup prejudice, utilising various psychophysiological and neuroimaging techniques. Currently, he is focused on projects involving social robots and social media.

Dr Tristan Vanyai's research interests are in the fields of hypersonic propulsion, aerodynamics, combustion visualisation and laser diagnostics, using both experimental and numerical techniques.

Dr Vanyai received his Doctor of Philosophy from The University of Queensland in 2018, after completing a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering (First Class Honours) and Bachelor of Science double degree at Monash University in 2012.

His research focuses on fundamentals of hypersonic propulsion through the scramjet cycle. Robust combustion within low intake compression scramjets is a key technology enabler for hypersonic accelerator vehicles, and can be achieved through utilising techniques such as thermal compression. Dr Vanyai is examining the improvements to scramjet combustion due to thermal compression through experiments in the T4 Stalker Tube facility using advanced optical techniques and comparison with results from numerical simulations.

Dr Antiopi Varelias leads the Transplantation Immunology laboratory at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Australia and is the Coordinator of the Immunology and Infectious diseases seminar series at the Institute. She was awarded her PhD from The University of Adelaide (Faculty of Medicine) in 2002 and held post-doctoral positions within the University of Adelaide’s Department of Surgery (TQEH) and Haematology/Oncology Unit, TQEH before moving to Brisbane to join the Bone Marrow Transplantation laboratory at QIMR Berghofer in 2008, at the time led by Professor Geoff Hill. Under Professor Hill’s mentorship, she has published many original research articles in peer-reviewed high-ranking journals on graft-versus-host disease and has presented her research findings at many international and national scientific meetings. As a chief investigator, she has been the recipient of funding from the NH&MRC and CCQ and is a member of several professional societies (ASTCT, TTS, TSANZ, AAI, ASI, SMI, ICIS).

Dr Varelias’s research interests focus on improving our fundamental understanding of the pathophysiology of graft-versus-host disease using innovative technologies and pre-clinical models, with the view of translating these findings into clinical practice and thereby provide better transplant outcomes for patients. Current research aims to define the immunological basis that underpins graft-versus-host disease, with an emphasis on cellular, cytokine and microbiome interactions that regulate mucosal immunity during stem cell transplantation.

Associate Professor Paulo Vasconcelos' research is in the fields of: Low-T Geochemistry, Economic Geology and 40Ar/39Ar Geochronology. He received his PhD from The University of California (Berkeley).

Paolo Vasconcelos research interests cover

• Supergene enrichment in ore deposits
• Isotopic dating of weathering processes
• Exploration geochemistry
• Palaeoclimatology and landscape evolution
• Application of K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar and noble gas systematics to ore deposit genesis
• Origin and geochemistry of gem deposits

His chief research projects are in the areas of:

• Weathering Geochronology, Weathering Geochronology and Landscape Evolution
• Mechanisms and timing of silicification in Australia and the genesis of opal deposits
• Cenozoic Magmatism in North East Brazil and in South East Queensland
• U-He, 40Ar/39Ar, and Re-Os as fingerprints of metal sources in orogenic gold deposits
• U-Th/He dating of iron and manganese oxides
• Cosmogenic 3He generation and retention in goethite and hematite
• Hydrothermal vs. supergene origin of orebodies in banded iron formations in the Hamersley iron province, the Quadrilátero Ferrífero iron province, and the Carajás iron province
• Supergene Enrichment in the Kalahari Manganese Fields, South Africa
• Timing of topaz, emerald and gold mineralization
• 40Ar/39Ar geocronological constraints on postulated hominid fossil sites in Cueva Victoria, Spain