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Biography:

Associate Professor James Vaughan is the Chemical Engineering Metallurgy Major Lead and Leader of the Hydrometallurgy Research Group. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgical Engineering at McGill University followed by Master of Applied Science and PhD degrees in Materials Engineering at The University of British Columbia in Canada. Before joining UQ, James gained industrial metallurgical process research and development experience with Glencore, Barrick and BHP. While at UQ, James served as Director of the University of Queensland Rio Tinto Bauxite & Alumina Technology Centre and has been Lead Chief Investigator of Australian Research Council Linkage and Discovery Projects. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM) and the Advanced Materials and Batteries Council (AMBC).

Research:

James' research focuses on the fundamental aspects of leaching, ion exchange and precipitation reactions as well as membrane separations. These projects are of interest to the base metals, precious metals and alumina refining industries as well as in the fabrication of value added materials such as lithium ion battery cathode precursors and zeolites.

Current Projects:

1. Extracting Queensland's rare earth elements sustainably (Queensland Department of Resources)
2. Copper process innovations (UniQuest)
3. New approach for producing zeolites from clay or mine tailings (Zeotech)
4. Inorganic membrane percrystallisation in hydrometallurgy (ARC Discovery)
5. Improving pressure oxidation for refractory gold (Newmont)
6. Effects of solution impurities on gold leaching (Newmont and BHP ARC Linkage)
7. Recycling vanadium catalyst (QEM Critical Minerals Trailblazer)
8. Purification of battery metal solution (Lanxess Critical Minerals Trailblazer)
9. Recycling batteries (V Resource)

Teaching and Learning:

• Hydrometallurgy and Electrometallurgy (METL6204)
• Metal Production and Recycling (METL2201)

Prof. Anand Veeraragavan's research interests are in supersonic combustion of hydrocarbons, hypersonic aerothermodynamics, advanced optical diagnostics for hypersonic flows and microcombustion based portable power. He is the Co-Director for UQ's Centre for Hypersonics. Since 2021, he is an Associate Editor for the AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, which is a Quartile 1 Journal in Aerospace Engineering (Scimago).

Prof. Anand Veeraragavan joined the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering as a mechanical engineering lecturer in 2012. He was an Mid-Career Advance Queensland Research Fellow (2017-2020) awarded for conducting research in the project entitled

Supersonic Combustion of Hydrocarbon Fuels for High-Mach-Number Axisymmetric Scramjets

Anand graduated with a B.Tech in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) in 2002. He obtained his MS (2006) and PhD (2009) degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland. His Doctoral research, which focused on understanding flame stabilization in microscale combustors, won the best thesis award in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland.

After his PhD, he took up a research appointment as a postdoctoral research associate in the Device Research Lab at MIT where he worked on thermophotovoltaics and nanofluid based volumetric solar absorbers. He next joined GE Energy as a combustion technologist in the US. At GE, he worked primarily on designing the next generation, land based, heavy duty, gas turbine engine combustors focusing on cost, operability, reliability and emissions and also completed his lean Six Sigma Greenbelt certification at GE.

He is currently undertaking world-leading research in the field of hypersonics and supersonic combustion sponsored by Australian DST, U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and U.S. Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development (AOARD). This includes leading the Australian effort in prestigious projects such as ground testing and simulations in support of the Boundary Layer Transition/Turbulence (BOLT II) flight test sponsored by the AFOSR.

His research interests include:

• Supersonic combustion of hydrocarbon fuels
• Hypersonic aerothermodynamics
• Optical diagnostics: PLIF for supersonic combustion, FLDI for hypersonic aerothermodynamics, high-speed schlieren
• Micro-combustion driven power systems
• Solar thermal and solar photovoltaic technology development

Dr Martin Veidt's research interests are in applied mechanics covering all aspects of through life support of materials and structures with a special focus on composites such as fibre-reinforced laminates, sandwich structures and hybrid metal fibre laminates. This includes quality assurance and quantitative non-destructive evaluation using conventional, guided wave and non-linear ultrasonics; stress analysis and damage mechanics; and experimental determination of mechanical characteristics of materials and interfaces.

He received his Dr sc techn from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 1991 and his Dipl Masch Ing ETH from there in 1986. His current research projects are in the fields of:

• Non-linear ultrasonics
• Ultrasonic manipulation of microbubbles for drug delivery
• Functional composites
• Hybrid composite laminates
• Light weighting

Dr Jemma Venables is a social work lecturer and joined the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work at UQ in 2017. Her research explores the policy-practice interface in child, youth and family practice. In particular, Jemma’s research focuses on the intersection of statutory child protection, family support services, domestic and family violence (DFV) and transition from out-of-home care support. Underpinning her research is a key interest in collaboration, inter-agency working and justice. Within the school, Jemma draws on her research and practice experience to teach into undergraduate and post-graduate courses that explore the interface of law, policy and social work practice.

My expertise is in assessing the influence of different environmental factors on the properties of metals. My current work focuses on understanding hydrogen embrittlement of high strength steels and corrosion of metals. I am also involved in hydrogen embrittlement studies of additively manufactured metals, and surface modification of metals via electrochemical processes (electroplating and electropolishing).

I am a natural resource economist with a research focus on the design and evaluation of resource and environmental policy and practice to facilitate global action to conserve biodiversity, mitigate climate risk and address United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This requires quantification of the complex and sometimes perverse domestic and international carbon, biodiversity and socio-economic trade-offs (including leakages) that can be associated with well-intentioned policy.

My research is highly interdisciplinary and collaborative with colleagues at UQ and elsewhere in academia, government and industry, including ecologists, agricultural scientists, engineers and social scientists. The research methods I employ include stratified and replicated field experiments, cost-benefit analysis, lifecycle analysis of carbon, mathematical programming, simulation and applied environmental economics including non-market valuation.

Specific contexts in which I have evaluated the socio-economic, carbon and biodiversity conservation performance of management and policy include:

• Australian Indigenous agribusiness;
• Forest and wood product value chains in Australia, the United States, Fiji and the Philippines;
• Silvopastoral system value chains in Australia and Fiji;
• Wildfire risk mitigation in Australia and the United States;
• Invasive species management in Australia and the United States; and
• Biomass energy in the United States.

I obtained my first degree in Psychology (Experimental & Theoretical) from Ghent University in Belgium and completed a Ph.D. in Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Groningen. Following a postdoc at NeuRa in Sydney and a few years lecturing on psychology at the Australian Catholic University, I chose to shift my research focus to environmental issues, and how they affect individual and collective human health and wellbeing. I gained experience with grassroots commmunity conservation projects as a volunteer and completed the interdisciplinary MSc in Conservation Science at Imperial College London in 2016. I was a researcher at Imperial's Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College from 2017-2021. My research is now broadly focused on the human dimensions of environmental change, with a particular interest in how people (emotionally) connect with nature, determinants of pro-environmental behaviour, the health and wellbeing benefits of nature exposure and the mental health impacts of climate change.

Doctor Anthony Verderosa is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at the University of Queensland (UQ). Verderosa is the head researcher of a team dedicated to the design, synthesis, and microbiological evaluation of antibiotic conjugates. Their project involves synthetically linking different antibiotics and/or antibiotic adjuvants to generate novel dual-acting antimicrobial conjugates to treat resistant bacterial infections. Verderosa is an early career researcher (ECR) with expertise in synthetic organic chemistry, molecular bacteriology, antimicrobial testing, drug development, and biofilm remediation. His PhD (2020) involved transdisciplinary work (chemistry/microbiology) that focused on discovering and developing nitroxide-functionalised antibiotics - new drugs for treating and eradicating microbial biofilms. After submitting his PhD, Verderosa accepted a Postdoctoral Research position in molecular bacteriology and bacterial pathogenesis, where he developed new methods and strategies for tackling antimicrobial resistance.

Dr Verdi's research is in the field of computational materials physics. Her work employs first-principles or ab initio methods, complemented by machine learning techniques, to predict and understand physical properties of materials without relying on empirical models. For more information, visit the research group website.

She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2017. After working at the University of Oxford and the University of Vienna, Dr Verdi moved to the University of Sydney in 2023 as an ARC DECRA Fellow. In the same year, she then joined UQ as a Lecturer in Condensed Matter Physics. She is an associate investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Biotechnology (QUBIC).

Her current research focuses on understanding the structural, optical and thermodynamic properties of atomic defects for applications in quantum technologies. She is also interested in studying the influence of atomic vibrations, defects, temperature and disorder on the intrinsic properties of various functional materials that can be exploited for novel technologies. Feel free to reach out to Dr Verdi if you are interested in simulating materials properties from first principles using supercomputers and exploring how this can help develop better materials.

Martie-Louise Verreynne is a Professor in Innovation and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, at the University of Queensland. Her research in innovation, particularly open innovation, focuses on how small firms leverage capabilities and networks to gain a competitive edge. Martie-Louise is a regular contributor to leading small business, entrepreneurship, strategy, and interdisciplinary journals and serves as Senior Associate Editor for the Journal of Small Business Management. Her work is funded by the ARC and other government and industry collaborators. She actively works with policy-makers and industry bodies to influence outcomes for the small firms that are the engine of the Australian and global economy. For this work, she has received both national teaching and university research engagement awards.

Lizette specialises in applying technical knowledge and research outcomes in industrial applications to improve process performance.

Lizette holds a Bachelor of Engineering Honours degree in Control Engineering from the University of Pretoria, South Africa and is a minerals processing engineer with more than 15 years industrial experience that joined the JKMRC in 2019. She has extensive experience in processing of precious group metals (PGM’s), copper and iron ore.

She has been involved in a number of commissiong projects, including ultra-fine grinding circuits with optimisation of the downstream flotation circuits and the commissioning and operation of gravity separation plants for the treatment of low grade iron ore. She has also implemented metallurgical ore characterisation test programs in PGM and iron ore processing.

David graduated from the University of London with a BSc (Hons) in biochemistry (King’s College) and PhD which investigated the role of epidermal growth factor receptors in liver regeneration (Imperial College). Since then he has worked on a variety of projects including; immunoassay development (Ortho Clinical Diagnostics); artificial liver machine development (Imperial College); and p53 mutations in liver cancer (QIMR). He joined the Department of Nephrology at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane in 1999. He is a senior lecturer in The University of Queensland Faculty of Medicine, a senior member of the UQ Kidney Disease Research Laboratory and manages the Princess Alexandra Hospital Endotoxin Testing Service.

His main research interests are in the area of renal tubulointerstitial fibrosis, inflammation and also the mechanisms of renal cancer development – particularly the role that cytokines and growth factors play in these processes. Current projects include the role of protease activated receptor-2 in renal scarring, inflammation and cancer, the mechanism of heavy metal toxicity in the kidney and the renoprotective properties of erythropoietin. The Princess Alexandra Hospital Endotoxin Testing Service routinely tests samples from dialysis units throughout Queensland.

I am an NHMRC Leadership Fellow with joint apointments at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) and School of Pharmacy, UQ. My research interests lie in the fields of peripheral pain mechanisms, target identification and analgesic drug discovery. I investigate the contribution of ion channels to sensory neuronal physiology using highly subtype-selective toxins isolated from venomous animals with the aim to develop novel analgesics with improved efficacy and tolerability.