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Dr Uyanik Received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2016 and worked as Postdoctoral research Fellow at the Wallis Institute of Political Economy at the Univerisity of Rochester until jointing the University of Queensland in 2017.

Dr Uyanik's research interests lie in Economic Theory, Game Theory, Political Economy, Computational Economics and Mathematical Economics. His research has been published in journals including Journal of Economic Theory, Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior and Journal of Mathematical Economics.

Associate Professor Lata Vadlamudi is a Senior Staff Specialist in Neurology at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital; Epileptologist within the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program; Metro North Clinician Research Fellow; and Brain, Neurology and Mental health Theme Leader at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research.

She obtained her medical degree from the University of Queensland and completed physician training in the field of Neurology. Further specialized training in epilepsy was undertaken in Melbourne, Sydney and the Mayo Clinic, USA. Her PhD was obtained from the University of Melbourne.

Clinical interests include management of women with epilepsy, particularly during pregnancy with a dedicated women and epilepsy clinic. Other interests include integrating genomics into clinical care with current research projects including developing a Queensland neuro-genomics service to underpin the era of precision-based medicine; and an MRFF-funded project personalising epilepsy regimes with stem cells and artificial intelligence models for superior treatment outcomes.

Awards have included the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research Clinician Researcher of the Year, Metro North Clinician Research Fellowship; Highly Commended Clinical Research Award by Metro North Hospital and Health Service, Epilepsy Queensland Health Award for contributions to the medical care of people with epilepsy; and Leonard Cox Award from the Australian and New Zealand Association of Neurologists for outstanding contribution to research in the field of Neurology.

Radislav (Slava) Vaisman is a faculty member in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland. Radislav earned his Ph.D. in Information System Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in 2014. Radislav’s research interests lie at the intersection of applied probability, statistics, and computer science. Such a multidisciplinary combination allows him to handle both theoretical and real-life problems, in the fields of machine learning, optimization, safety, and system reliability research, and more. He has published in top-ranking journals such as Statistics and Computing, INFORMS, Journal on Computing, Structural Safety, and IEEE Transactions on Reliability. The Stochastic Enumeration algorithm, which was introduced and analyzed by Radislav Vaisman, had led to the efficient solution of several problems that were out of reach of state of the art methods. In addition, he is an author of 3 books with three of the most prestigious publishers in the field, Wiley, Springer, and CRC Press. Radislav serves on the editorial board of the Stochastic Models journal.

Rick Valenta specialises in multidisciplinary research meeting the challenges of future mineral supply.

Professor Rick Valenta is the Director of the Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland. He leads research aimed at improving the discovery, mining and processing of hydrothermal ore deposits, as well as understanding and mapping the risks associated with future mineral supply. His areas of focus include structural geology, geophysics and ore deposit geology, with an overall theme of better understanding the underlying processes which lead to the localisation and characteristics of these deposits. Rick also has a strong focus on development of 4D mineral systems models from deposit to region scales, using these models to improve targeting techniques, better formulate geological and resource models, and inform prediction of mineral processing performance.

Trained as a geologist, Rick worked for a short time in Petroleum exploration in Western Canada before coming to Australia to complete a PhD on the George Fisher Zn-Pb-Ag deposit in the Mount Isa region. He then spent 5 years as a lecturer at Monash University in an industry-supported role aimed at developing the science and practice of structural interpretation of geophysical data. During this period, Rick was involved in the development of very successful industry training programs and a significant number of publication and software outputs.

Rick then spent 23 years in industry roles including Chief Geologist, Chief Operating Officer, and multiple CEO roles. Companies and exploration teams under his direction have been involved in a significant number of mineral discoveries of copper, uranium and gold, as well as several transformative company transactions. In his career, Rick has held senior executive roles in teams which have raised over $150m in venture capital investment, leading to the creation of over $2b in shareholder value.

Rick is a Fellow of the AusIMM and the Society of Economic Geologists, a practising member of the Association of Professional Geologists of Ontario (APGO), and a member of the Geological Society of Australia.

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.

Dr Jessica van den Heuvel is a senior lecturer working as a teaching and research academic in the General Practice Clinical Unit (GPCU). She also works as a general practitioner in Brisbane’s northside. In 2024, she undertook an Academic Registrar post with the GPCU, researching general practitioner experiences of weight stigma in maternity care, as a part of a body of nationwide research, “Body Positive Birth”. Her research interests include reproductive and planetary health. She teaches and lectures in the medical school and is involved with curriculum development and examination for medical students on their general practice rotations.

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.

I completed my PhD in the Netherlands, where I focused on host–pathogen interactions between the malaria sporozoite and human immune cells. I also used mouse models to investigate which organs and organ-specific immune cells are involved during the early stages of malaria infection after sporozoite entry into the body. In addition, I contributed to human clinical trials evaluating newly designed genetically attenuated malaria parasites as vaccine candidates.

My main expertise lies in human co-culture systems and malaria infection models, with a strong focus on malaria vaccine research.

At UQ, I began my postdoctoral fellowship at IMB, where I investigate malaria-specific vaccine targets, focusing on human cellular immune responses.

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.